Melissa Harris-Perry has a problem with the term "hard work"

It reminds her of slavery. Melissa Harris-Perry keeps a picture of slaves working in a cotton field to remind her what hard work really means.

She makes a thoughtful point.

A very fine point from a pinched perspective through polarized sunglasses peeking through leveler window slats while wearing horse blinders and holding a toilet paper tube up to one eye with a kaleidoscope extender and a prism taped on the end, the other eye pinched shut. But a point.

Harris-Perry told a Republican Latino to be careful using the term when he spoke about  Paul Ryan. She presumed to lay out precise terms Republicans can and cannot say and why that is so delivering the customary critical race theories with added sexist positioning.

Crackpot. I think something rude and dismissive and move on.

But no, conservative people find this interesting. They actually respond. And boy, do they. Thoughtfully so. More thought than it is worth, actually but nonetheless thoughtful. Mike Rowe delivers an excellent rebuttal, unfortunately published on FaceBook. I'll summarize so you don't have to click over there.

He displays a photo of his face leaning on wall next to another photo of himself scrubbing a horrible toilet.

No longer a limit to what people can be offended by.

She's put off that hard work is linked with success. And that hard workers are not so successful as Paul Ryan. There is inequality between hard work and realized success introducing the term "relative privilege" and then introducing unfairness in sexes and hard work using an example of woman without healthcare.

 She says we call them failures
 She says we call call them sucking from the system.

Mike Rowe responds that Harris-Perry having pictures of slaves to remind her what hard work really looks like is the same thing as hanging pictures of rape and bondage to remind one of the true nature of human sexuality looks like.

Rowe thinks a few things are glaringly obvious to anyone other than a Wake Forest professor type so he must back up and point out a few fundamentals.

There is a difference between regular hard work and forced labor. There is a big difference between modern options available and concomitant choices made regarding career paths, marriage and divorce, child bearing and family rearing, contrasted with what went on back then in history.

Conflating hard work and forced labor minimizes the importance of decent work ethic while diminishing the horror of slavery. And we do this all the time with phrases like "my boss sure is a slave driver" and my paycheck is a "slave's waves." Melissa comes corkscrewing in from the back side of things by seeing certain hard workers not prospering as other hard workers so be "super careful" about overly-praising hard work.

"Relative privilege" is a way of recognizing life is unfair. The term prepares unsuspecting viewers for the suggestion that slavery is proof that hard work doesn't pay.

His response receives its own mostly positive responses but FaceBook being Facebook there will be some expected uncomprehending. One commenter writes, "I don't see where Melissa Harris mentions anything about slavery. So Rowe's whole explanation is based on something Harris didn't say."

I have to get off FB and delete its tracking cookies.

Michelle Malkin also writes only in academia is the color-coding of one's work ethic seen as the apex of progressive enlightenment, while gender weighted too.

The center of Michelle's position is a recent trip she took to College of Ozarks, Hard Work U. It's founder, James Forsyth, received inspiration from a young boy who told him he had to drop out of school due to poor finances. Forsyth founded a private Christian four-year school for economically disadvantaged. 90% of students demonstrate financial need. All are required to work for the campus group or institution. The college carries no institutional debt and codifies debt avoidance into its character education. Michelle counters white privilege is a cynical construct of liberal elites dependent on grievance narratives to stoke controversy. She says she saw kids doing all kind of slave-labor-y things all over the college, mowing lawns, making beds, sweeping floors, washing dishes. Many are first in their family to attend college. And during that trip and making these observations it never occurred to Michelle Malkin to rank the industriousness of hard-working young people all around her by race.