Rightwing myths

I suppose the most enduring of all rightwing myths is that the poor are lazy. That is one that the Pilgrim Fathers brought over from England, where the Poor Laws were savagely repressive.

Somewhere in one of his South Seas stories Jack London has a devastating line about colonial planters sitting on the verandah explaining to a visitor how work-shy the natives (down below minding the plantation) are.

I think we can be sure that all the censorious commenters in this Bloomberg/Business Week story about McDonald's workers who cannot afford to eat at McDonald's haven't had to work up a sweat in the last 10 years or so, if ever. But in the context of rightwing myths I want to focus on commenter jon fraer, who writes:

fasft food is not meant to be a living wage/ never has. always been for a first teenagers job.

Well, as it happens, my first wage work was at a Shoney's Big Boy in 1963. And, yes, I was in high school. But, no, the other workers were not part-timers. Every other worker there was an adult. It was a career for them.

Rightwingers, libeling the poor since 1620. Happy Thanksgiving!