Jobs = Jobs, O = O

A while back, I saw a subtle, funny cartoon I  just loved—I wish I could remember the cartoonist and give him credit.  It was a disheveled couple walking out of a funeral and the husband says something to the wife like, “I really have to start being a better person.”  It’s hard to live up to a eulogy, in other words—no one is as nice as we say he was after he’s dead.  And yes, with no disrespect whatsoever, I have to admit I’ve found some of the coverage of Steve Jobs’ untimely death on the fulsome side.  The guy was no Thomas Edison, though he did make a respectable rush at Henry Ford.

But understand, that’s in the nature of the eulogizing beast. And if I criticize the media on this, it comes from someone who just switched every device he has over to Mac after 150 years on PC’s and who thinks the iPhone the single best machine since the wheel.

But whatever Jobs’ place in history turns out to be, it will surely be higher than the man who currently occupies the Oval office. Because Jobs made stuff that people want:  the one and only legitimate way to create jobs. He made stuff that was cool and that we liked and that we desired and so we bought it and so he made money and so he hired people to make more cool stuff.  Jobs equaled jobs.

O equals none.  Because he tells us what we ought to want—wind power and higher teacher’s salaries and more bureaucrats and government insurance and electric cars—and when we don’t want it or feel we can’t afford it, he wags his finger and scolds and complains and blames us for not kowtowing to his arrogance and lack of creativity—and then he wonders where the jobs are. Those protesters being paid by unions to occupy Wall Street, demanding “society” pay for their “educations” and their other wastes of time—they never seem to wonder where “society” gets the money to pay for anything.  It gets the money from people like Jobs who make and do things that other people want or need. And if you ain’t doing that, you don’t get no money—unless you take it by force from more productive people than yourself.

Let’s hope the death of Jobs does not symbolize the death of jobs in America.  And let’s hope the next election results deliver an O for O.