Writing Boots

Boots readers are aware of my plot to put communicators in charge of the government.

A few years ago I supported Joliet, Ill. English teacher Pat McGuire for Will County treasurer, a position in which, among many other achievements, he has scrubbed hundreds of standard taxpayer communications clean of mumbo and free of jumbo.

And of course I've been claiming Obama is the best presidential writer since Lincoln (it has come to my attention that Teddy Roosevelt might be in there too), and throughout last year I urged my readers to "Vote the Communication Ticket."

Apparently, many of you did!

Well, there's a new candidate on the communication, ticket. My friend, Chicago writer and labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan (that's pronounced "gay-gan").

The writer of a number of significant books on labor and the courts and a nationally known political comentator, Tom is running to fill Rahm Emanuel's vacated seat in Illinois' 5th District, on Chicago's north side.

Here's what The New York Times said about his Tom's first book:

“Thomas Geoghegan’s Which Side Are You On? is a quirky, brilliant
career memoir of a man who attended college in the late 1960’s and
moved on to Harvard Law School, but  who did not follow the natural
course and rise into the upper ether of government service or the
wealthier law firms. Instead, he plunged downward, because of
1960’s-type ideals and   a romantic mishap, into the smoky pit of union
politics. He joined a campaign to overthrow a corrupt leader of the
United Mine Workers union. The truest thing of all in his book is the feeling of open, ardent
love that he expresses for ordinary working people who try to help one
another out—which is unionism’s main principle."

How can you not like a guy like that?

I like the idea of Tom's candidacy because I think Obama's concilliatory, centrist instincts require thoughtful pushes and prods and reminders from principled guys like Geoghegan, who's in daily touch through his law practice devoted to such homely cases as one he's working on now, to protect poor people from predatory payday lenders.

The thing is, 5th District race is split a hundred ways and the special election primary is rushing up March 3. Tom needs visibility and visibility demands dough. You can learn more about Tom's campaign here if you're moved to contribute you can do it here.

And if you live in Chicago and would like to meet Tom and hear him speak, I'm co-hosting a campaign event next Sunday.

It'll be interesting, and so would U.S. Rep. Tom Geoghegan (D-Ill.).

In what is truly an absurd version of multitasking, I've been trying to time my post-lunch nap with the daily press briefing of Obama press secretary Robert Gibbs. I want to take in news while I fall asleep.

But it doesn't work. So desperately am I rooting for Obama's candidacy to get off to a fast, clean start and not get bogged down in The Usual Bullshit® that my heart hammers against my chest cavity as I listen to Gibbs bullshit his way through these briefings (as all press secretaries always have, and as they always will).

I cannot imagine having a job whose core skill involved pretending, on someone else's behalf no less, that I am an altogether reasonable, rational human being, good humored at all times, perfectly well-informed and always on the ball.

A job in which I can't have days like I had yesterday, when my motto was, "I hate everybody and everybody hates me. That's the way it is, and that's the way I like it to be." When I screamed at the top of my lungs in response to a voice mail I received, "Yeah, if you want to catch up with me, read my fuckin' blog." When I responded to a pesky, nagging, e-mailing speechwriter, "As a communication expert, do you believe it increases the power of your message to bold, italicize and underline the word 'Please'? I mean, wowsers!"

Real-life communicators with actual jobs, remind me: How do you do it (every fuckin' day)?

You know them: They're recruiters, they're human resources consultants, they're "jobs experts" who in good times justify their existence by chattering incessantly about a "tight skilled labor market" that's independent of the economy, that has everything to do with demographic changes in the U.S., the Generation Y baby bust, yada yada yada.

You know the jive.

"I'm hearing across the board, across industries, companies
indicating they can't exploit market opportunity because they can't
find people with the right skills," said Jeff Summer, an executive at
Deloitte Consulting said in a CNN Money article from Jan. 5, 2007. He said
that there's virtually no long-term unemployment for skilled workers. "It's down to the nub already," he said. "Supply and demand is completely out of whack."

Looks like it's getting back in whack real quick.

"Younger employees know there's a shortage of skilled workers," writes career consultant Marilyn Moats Kennedy on her website. "And they're not about to be exploited (work long hours, be loyal as a dog) as Boomers were."

Bet she didn't write that in the last six months.

"The future U.S. workforce is facing not only a worker shortage but also a skills shortage," wrote Tom Casey, an "expert in the development of organizational transformation strategies" on his company's blog, on March 21, 2008. I don't know what has happened to Tom since then, because when you search the blog for his name, the following message is all that appears, from a Julie Coogler:

"Oh Tom! I am so sad….I will certainly miss you….I don’t know who I will go
to anymore! More and more of my colleagues and family are now gone from
TCG and I am just a helpless sheep waiting for the slaughter! I guess the best thing to do is to hold our heads up and know that
we have our health and families and other opportunities will unfold!"

We'll know we're on the rebound from this recession when we start hearing once again about the perils of the "tight labor market" that's independent of the economy.