I Think You're Totally Wrong by David Shields Read Free Book Online Page B

this?
    CALEB: Yeah. He and I are still cool. So, after a while, I got aggressive, in other people’s face. When you get challenged, you puff up and challenge back. I’ve almost come to blows with Ed Jones. He was talking trash, I called him out, and Ed started threatening me, saying he’d get his piece and leave my daughters without a father. Tyrone and some others got my back, got between us and started threatening Ed. Ed backed down.

    CALEB: Immediately after graduating from the UW with a degree in poli-sci, Terry worked in supermarkets, hanging up advertising, and she’s still with the same company. She became a vice president, then a director of retail sales accounts.
    DAVID: What’s the company?
    CALEB: It became News America Marketing when it was bought by NewsCorp.
    DAVID: In other words, Murdoch.
    CALEB: In LA she’s worked out of the Fox Studios building. She travels a lot: LA, San Fran, New York. She met Henry Kissinger at a party, has ridden in an elevator with Bill O’Reilly.
    DAVID: So on some level she’s working for Fox News?
    CALEB: No. Both her company and Fox News belong to NewsCorp. She negotiates advertising between producers and retailers. If Sara Lee wants product placement in Albertsons, they talk to someone like her.
    DAVID: Sure. Just like publishers pay to have books displayed in the front of the store. Is she someone who likes to work?
    CALEB: She says no, but if she’s not working, she gets restless. She likes aspects of the job, the responsibility and satisfaction. She feels that, well, my friends and I are artists and have relatively stunted careers, but we made a choice not to get a job that demands a certain commitment. I’ve got friends close to fifty, and they have the typical liberal take: they want the government to pay for their health care and so forth.
    DAVID: That’s a right-wing caricature of the typical liberal take.
    CALEB: They think corporations are greedy and predatory, whereas, to Terry, corporations employ thousands of people, and these people work hard but are well compensated. We have health insurance and security because of her, and it was a choice she made.
    DAVID: She thinks you guys are a bunch of spoiled brats?
    CALEB: She tells me, “I wanted financial security. That was important to me, and I work my ass off.” And she does. She’s the ant and we artists are grasshoppers, writing songs and poems and novels as we curse this cold and dark planet.
    DAVID: Got it in one.
    CALEB: Her job is hard. It’s fatiguing and stressful, so she deserves to come home and watch mindless TV and relax with a glass or two of wine.
    DAVID: Does she make a good salary?
    CALEB: Around one twenty-five, counting bonuses. She flies a lot, so we can take vacations on her frequent flyer miles. What do you make at the UW?
    DAVID: Same.
    CALEB: One twenty-five and you work six months of the year?
    DAVID: I teach two quarters a year. It’s more like five months a year.
    CALEB: You have to read and prepare, but still, $125,000?
    DAVID: Does that seem like a lot?
    CALEB: Yes. And you were worried about money in 1996?
    DAVID: When I first came to the UW, I was making twenty-seven. Salaries at the UW are pretty bad, due to state cutbacks. The only reason I have a decent salary is I keep getting recruited by other schools. It’s like anything: you become more desirable when someone else desires you. My salary went up considerably, from sixty to ninety. Then I got another offer and it went from ninety to one-ten.
    CALEB: Amazing.
    DAVID: That’s what Laurie says. She thinks I have the cushiest job in the world, but I’ve worked unbelievably—
    CALEB: Heard it. Heard it.

    CALEB: In business journals, when a writer touts a company or stock, at the end of the article there’s usually a disclosure saying whether the writer, the writer’s employer, or the writer’s family members own the stock, so if there’s a