"The workforce" sounds a bit more clinical than labor, and probably nicer than working folks that we grind up in the machine. It does lead those of us who spend far too much time contemplating the psycho analytic underpinnings of these sorts of things to wonder about the reasons for the name change.
The Workforce sounds a bit malthusian, with a tip of the cap to scads of futuristic sci fi thrillers where the troglodyte worker bees become grist for the mill. To recognize labor was to empower unions, and we know that they are the enemy of all things american to the plutocracy. Now with the name change we demote the workers so that they are not on equal footing with the corporations, who by the way have been recently enshrined by our august Supreme Court as people too.
And for those of you skeptics who think that this is merely a trivial name change, I would like to point you to the work of George Lakoff, a Cognitive Linguistics professor at Berkeley. I first encountered Lakoff with his seminal book, Don't think of an elephant, know your values and frame the debate (2004) Chelsea Green, wherein he introduces the power of framing and the importance of language. Lakoff is brilliant and always worth a read. Words have power and the name change is a product of a concerted calculus.
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In the spirit of the name change, I have been thinking of a few more committees whose monikers could stand a rewrite.
The House Committee on Science and Technology will be renamed the House Committee of Science, Technology and Creationist Theory. Since all science is theoretical, we must give equal time to the 4000 year old earth factions.
The Senate Committee on Indian Affairs is now the Committee of good for nothing redskins who should be grateful that europeans decided to bless their shores and lead them out of the swamp so that they could establish Indian Casinos and steal all of grandma's social security check at the one armed bandits. Or maybe something shorter.
The House Committee on Armed Services is officially renamed - Kill them all and let god sort them out.
And of course the Minerals and Management Services is in desperate need of a rewrite, how about, "we sell you leases for pennies on the dollar and then when we retire we go to work for you and get the big bucks" services? Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it?
2 comments:
Your new name for the House Committee on Armed Services is a cheap shot.
--- no pun intended, anonymous?? while it was used a bit
tongue in cheek, that quote has been used at times in
the military and could equally apply to terrorist groups
as martyr's rationale, but its origin goes back to the christian church, google search it.
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