Selling Shoes Vs Selling Souls

Senator Chuck Hagel has career advice for a new generation of Americans.

“If you wanted a safe job, go sell shoes. ... Don't hide anymore; none of us.” – Slate Magazine.

I’ve sold before to make both ends meet. I’ve sold water filters, men’s clothes, housewares and fast food that will up-armor your arteries. I don’t talk this talk to brag; retail selling is often the bottom rung on the employment food chain. It’s what you do to help pay for school, or because your resume doesn’t support more responsible employment.

Selling never proves easy and rarely glamorous. You meet a few very likeable customers in retail, the remaining majority treats you like a non-entity; providing you don’t screw up. Then you become the target reference point for them to dump the day’s frustrations. Once or twice I’ve stood there, and it’s never been pleasant.

Safe? Usually. Glamorous? Never.

Read on . . .

I point all this out simply to elucidate the extent to which Chuck Hagel is a tool. This has nothing to with the war that he, John Edwards, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry all four voted George W. Bush the authorization to wage. Nor does it have to do with his consequent retreat from that vote once the Shi’ite hit The Red Zone.

It simply relates to the man’s existential state. Chuck Hagel is a self-aggrandizing, hard-blowing, good-for-nothing, utter p*ss*ng tool. Providing I can say that without disrespecting catheters too greatly.

Regardless of whether Peggy Noonan or Mickey Kaus more accurately takes the measure of Chuck Hagel’s moral courage; I would NEVER vote for this man to be President. Yes, ban me from RedState all you want, but Hagel vs. Hillary makes me vote for Hillary.

I’ll be dragged forth and shot before I vote someone into the White House with that little respect for the common, working American. You don’t even have to hear the man’s voice to sense the contempt this overrated patrician has for the lady or gentleman who sold him his last pair of Johnston and Murphys’.

Anyone who hates the working class American so much that he invokes them in public debate, as a symbol worthy of contempt, deserves to work a few 3AMs in the drive-through at Hardee’s. Put him in the one next to the cigarette factory, over on Bells Road where all the tired crack whores go, after their Johns have done them a favor and passed out.

Most people don’t need the politically correct experience of seeing this type of poverty. I saw it, and aside from making me bust my rear more diligently in difficult college math courses, the experience didn’t help me, unless I smell better after being doused in burger grease. This type of work truly sucks. You have to dig really hard to find the love or the dignity.

Chuck Hagel, however, needs to be made to go digging. He needs to experience how safe selling shoes really is. He’ll stop disrespecting the retail salesman when he tries to sell that snappy pair of loafers to Jacob Marley or Ebeneezer Scrooge. Then he’ll see what real people see every day.

At that point, I hope, he’ll stop making fun of those who sell shoes. He realizes that it beats the living heck out of chasing the fame and the glory. After all, nothing is less safe than dismantling and selling small pieces of your own soul.