The term has some negative conontations, but that only speaks to a lack of understanding of what a ‘jailhouse lawyer’ represents within the many cultures of humans all over the globe today. In basic terms, a jailhouse lawyer is a little person who sticks up for his or her fellow little people for the sake of something inside of them, regardless of how badly it will ensure they are fucked over personally in the end. Jesus was perhaps the most notorious jailhouse lawyer in history. In prison a jailhouse lawyer generally is someone of higher intelligence than their peers, who utilizes the collective plight of those around them to further a cause against `the system’. On the street, a jailhouse lawyer could be someone that organizes their coworkers towards forming a union, or perhaps someone who sets up a community watch in their crime infested neighborhood. To come into contact with such a person may lead you to inspiration, anger, bewilderment or envy depending on what part of history your life existed during and where. For the vast majority of people on this earth, silence is a choice most attractive, especially for those of us who have something to lose. Fear is the jailhouse lawyer’s #1 enemy.
To learn that there were loyalists all over the colonies throughout the Revolutionary War is to appreciate the effect that fear can have on people, and how dangerous it truly is to speak out against power. Here were these people now an entire ocean removed from the authority they feared, with neighbors uprooting amongst them and enlisting to fight for the sake of freedom, they hedged their bets safely in case the effort was doomed to fail. Were these people cowards? I don’t think so, not personally in this situation, although the rancor of nationalistic politics today would prompt most of us to call them just that. Instead I understand that the loyalists of that time were merely representing a sign of what was to come. Indeed, as societies grew more advanced and freedom spread its virtue throughout the nations of some, along with it grew the amount that one could lose by rocking the boat.
That’s where we are today, in a sphere of supposed comfort, one that teaches us to shun or look down upon the jailhouse lawyer, because everything is fine and if I’m going to lose mine it’s not going to be for the sake of anyone I’m not related to. Entertainment, comfortable furniture, air conditioning…without these things we’d be miserable, and without the job I have it wouldn’t be possible to avoid such misery. So while inflation fails to match up with the rise in my pay, at least I’m not like some of the people who have nothing, and anyways, that show I like is coming on tonight. That loudmouth down at the factory complaining about these things I too grow angry about is going to get what’s coming to him, and there’s no way in hell I’m going to get caught up in that rabble. Hence the term `jailhouse lawyer’, as in prison one rarely has a lot to lose anyway, so as time went by, the `patriot’ became something on a football helmet and the idea behind the term became something negative, `agitator’-‘troublemaker’-‘jailhouse lawyer’.
In the HBO series Deadwood we’re exposed to three characters that personify this concept, but in their own ways. Seth Bullock, Wild Bill Hickock and Wyat Earp all had urges to stick up for what was right in the face of power, that which caused most of those around them to quake in fear yet resent and tollerate for the same reason people remained loyal to Brittan in 1776. Sure, they could have done for themselves and said fuck it, but something inside of them wouldn’t allow them to feel like a man if they went out like that. So they pined the ‘sheriff’ badge on their coat and took many licks a piece for the good of the community. When industry took a knife, stabbed an `aggitatin organizer’ and left the body for everyone else to see and learn from, these guys got angry and did something. They were jailhouse lawyers, much in the tradition of others who drafted our Constitution and told a king to eat shit and die. Today we celebrate this act, yet at the same time grow uneasy whenever someone among us is embracing the actual spirit behind all of it. That general uneasiness is the product of fear, and the authority that instills that sense within us is much more cognizant of it than any of us little people will ever be by the looks of it.
The general state of affiars in America today indicates a society that has been neutered and druged for quite some time. When a person speaks out, they are ridiculed and torn apart, while always being described as having a stick up their ass put in place by some unpatriotic organization that happens to be controlling their every movement. Shit, you can’t even go on a hunger strike now without the government sticking a tube into your gut! To me it’s a sign of things to come, whereas to the powerful it’s a sign of progress. Look at what Ghandi was able to accomplish with such methods when the British were intent on telling his people where to get off…well, I guess our government learned something from all that, and by calling everything inconvenient unpatriotic or evil, they understand full well that there aren’t that many MEN among us who will think long enough to question it. Come to think of it, Americans aren’t even MAN ENOUGH to get themselves any more than $5.15 an hour as a bottom wage, let alone question whether or not its government is turning soldiers into cans of Spam for no reason.
Why did coal miners die at a higher rate this year than any other? Why were billionaires able to cheat the government out of taxes owed, while the IRS cut the amount of lawyers auditing their returns? Why were the children of working class Americans getting asthma at higher rates, while energy companies not only got away with not having to cut pollution, but enjoyed a period of unmatched prosperity and profit? Why are there less unions now than there were in the 1970s? Why has the separation between the wealthy and the middle class continue to grow year after year?
We’re losing. You and I are losing, and as a country, unless we’re dropping bombs – our people have to be the sorriest batch of sissies this world has ever seen. Nobody’s willing to go out on a limb, nobody’s willing to TAKE PRIDE in being a jailhouse lawyer anymore. Of course we’ll pat ourselves on the back and pretend we had something to do with our independence, but in reality none of us did a thing to make that happen. All the jailhouse lawyers who accomplished that have been dead for over a century, and besides the firework manufacturers, everyone else in this country is jerking it on July 4th. To me it’s like walking around with a pitchfork listening to Marilyn Manson on Easter, the way we look in amazement at the spectacular explosions of lights in the sky, yet fail to correlate what exactly it is we’re celebrating…is it the 1% salary increase two years running? Or is it the enormous sense of pride one gets from knowing that Americans are great at making things that explode?
If you’re a jailhouse lawyer in America today, you most likely won’t be killed for it, but you’ll probably be sorry in the end. In countries of less comfort and widespread delusion though, the jailhouse lawyer can be murdered and left out for everyone to see…that can still happen in places like Columbia, China and Russia. Do we have more or less to fear than any of those people? Obviously not – but then again, my boss could somehow find this post, call me into the office tomorrow and start asking me why I hate my country, and whether I’d like to have my possessions boxed up now or mailed later on in the week.
First of all, a good jailhouse lawyer helps free the less fortunate such as those who are wrongly incarcerated and a bad jailhouse lawyer games the system to get bad people out so they can re-offend. Jesus just showed people the way to their own slavation, he didn’t do anything on their behalf, it was entirely up to them.
And I don’t know why you bring up Ghandi’s efforts to convince the British to leave, no one is occupying America against our wishes. And the minimum wage is such a non issue, I don’t know anyone who makes minimum wage. Maybe highschool babysitters.
I am amazed at your ability to every issue and spin it into something negative while ignoring everything good. Coal miners die at a higher rate because it is a very dangerous job. What does that have to do with anything? Do you want to end mining in America? Skydiving and scuba diving are dangerous too, I’m sure we don’t need a nanny state.
Nobody’s willing to go out on a limb, nobody’s willing to TAKE PRIDE in being a jailhouse lawyer anymore.
What about Iraq? We have freed an enslaved people are great personal expense. We, as a nation, gave a shit load of money to the tsunami raged agreas around indonesia. We are fighting global terrorism also at great persoanl expense. America is the only nation that sticks up for anyone on a consistent basis. Cuba, Vietnam, Korea, Yugoslavia, all the 1900s were spent fighting oppression almost to the exclusion of all else.
I hope someday you will be able to see who the real “jailhouse lawyers” are.
What about those five thousand people who came out to hear his speak, all having forgotten to pack a lunch? The lepers…he didn\’t do anything on their behalf? How about the people who were able to enjoy a service without being hassled to buy crap on their way into the church?
Because both Ghandi and Jesus shook up the world without having to kill anyone in the process. The jailhouse lawyer uses what is inside of him or herself to inspire those around them, and while they do drop bombs quite often, it\’s not the kind we\’re familiar with. MLK had this quality, to stir up the power base by turning its own methods of pursuasion…violence and oppression…against it. Those watching from the edges of what\’s happening can see that violence is only aimed in one direction, and over time that equals an amount of credibility those in power cannot overcome. So when they murder an MLK, Jesus or Ghandi – it\’s a victory in that the jailhouse lawer was able to give the powerfull enough rope to hang themselves, to lose the war by the hands of their own aggression.
And your logic on the minimum wage could work for me as well…let\’s see…\”I don\’t know anyone who has AIDS, so most likely, nobody has it\”…obviously there are workers making minimum wage.
Safety inspections in West Virginia are turning up obselete oxygen tanks…still! The commissions in charge of ensuring that workers are provided as safe a working condition as possible have had mining executives appointed to them since the start of Bush\’s tenure. Industry has the deck stacked in their favor, and it\’s wrong. Government needs to do its job here, but there are plenty of people who wouldn\’t rate the matter higher in importance than what brand laxitives Paris Hilton uses. These miners have to fight for themselves, but of course, if they were to organize they\’d get canned while scabs from the border states are brought in to fill their shoes.
The same can be said for soldiers working in Iraq today with inadequate equipment and body armor. Do we just shrug that off as well? Why?
The Vietnamese were better off with the US rather than the French trying to colonize them? Hey, maybe you\’re right, maybe napalm is truly the best way to say \’We Love You!\’
Right – what did Jesus become after he was murdered? What did Ghandi become? It wasn\’t that the British were so good to the Indian people…unless I completely missed the point of all that history I learned in high school. Sure, there were plenty of folks in the UK who thought Ghandi was a bastard and that they had every right to occupy a soverign nation, but they weren\’t right about any of it.
World powers do these sorts of things, and nationalism convinces plenty of people back home that their cause is just, but how often in history does this euphoria hold?
People like to describe our actions in the Middle East as a gift to those people, yet the people themselves don\’t look at it that way. You can\’t drop a bomb and expect people to love you for it. I\’m sure Rush Limbaugh and Bill Kristol will argue otherwise, but neither of them have ever walked a day in these peoples\’ shoes.
My guess is they\’re sadistically kinky, and because they get horny off of a good beating, they assume that everyone else feels the same way…plus, if we don\’t drop these bombs fast enough, jobs will be lost in the plants all across the country that make them. Do you want Americans to lose their jobs? Of course not…so we\’ve got to drop them somewhere. But in this case it\’s alright since the Iraqis actually ENJOY having bombs droped on them…gets them horny.
I’m not so sure. The colonists had it pretty good. The taxes they paid were negligible. In fact most taxes imposed on them were quickly overturned. The British parliament of the day didn’t have much of a stomach for dealing too harshly with fellow Englishmen in the colonies.
And what’s more is that the British taxpayers had spent a great deal (millions) protecting the colonists from the French during the French and Indian war, just a decade or so previously. I think it takes big balls to hide behind the protection of the British one minute, and then get pissed about them being around the next.
I think there were loyalists because there were a good many people who realized how well they had it, and they weren’t interested in war. Wars are ugly.
I’m sure that was a typo, but it was a good one. Are Christians really slaves to an ideology crafted by fancy-robed men throughout modern history? Enquiring minds want to know.
I’m not as concerned about the current state of our nation as you Al. For two reasons: 1) I know some jailhouse lawyers, they’re not always the macho type you described in the Deadwood characters. Sometimes they’re 80 year old women cracking skulls to get health care for the poor and elderly. They are inspirational, and great examples for all of us. 2) One thing I’ve learned from the Christians around me is that the power of belief is everything. If you believe in something, then nothing else really matters. I also believe that you can CHOOSE what you believe. Christians choose to believe in their god. I choose to believe that man is basically good (even without god), and that in the end we are all converted to energy where our particles intermingle with all the other particles in the universe. It’s not all bad. Eventually America will fade and become something else. All that will matter is the life you lived with your family and friends. You seem like a smart guy, I’d say your future looks bright (regardless of what happens to this nation we coincidently live in).
As for our fellow Americans, and especially those low wage earners. The burden is upon them to rise up one way or another. The struggle will make them stronger, if they choose to struggle.
Sounds like Deadwood is worth checking out.
You have no idea CM – – – again though, don’t purchase the episodes. In fact, I should inquire whether SR still has his copies sent to him from Adam. See if he’ll kick them on up to Alaska.
I’m with you on the need for people to rise up, but the term ‘the world needs ditchdiggers’ still rings true, and the purchasing power of these folks, if it were to increase it would allow them to create more stable homes for their families and also ensure that their kids are provided for. A single mother with zero skills shouldn’t have to pull 80 hour weeks to get by…her kids are going to end up robbing me someday, whether it’s at gunpoint or through money I’ll be spending to keep them incarcerated somewhere.
I waxed religious on KOS after posting this one over there, where I wanted to see Dems go in the upcoming years in terms of Christians:
RT: Jesus just showed people the way to their own slavation, he didn’t do anything on their behalf, it was entirely up to them.
What about those five thousand people who came out to hear his speak, all having forgotten to pack a lunch? The lepers…he didn\’t do anything on their behalf? How about the people who were able to enjoy a service without being hassled to buy crap on their way into the church?
Giving someone a fish sandwiche and getting someone out of a 30 year prison term on a technicallity are two very different things. Healing someone would be akin to a doctor, not a lawyer and all those paople came to the sermon on their own volition, not because law enforcement incarcerated them there.
Industry has the deck stacked in their favor, and it\’s wrong.
I think insurance comapnies and personal injury lawyers would have to disagree.
Government needs to do its job here,
This is probably the worst thing that could happen, you can’t trust government to do anything right, just look at border enforcement, social security and medicare/medicaid. The legislature has set the laws and the courts will enforce them.
The same can be said for soldiers working in Iraq today with inadequate equipment and body armor. Do we just shrug that off as well? Why?
I never understood how you could determine our equipment is inadequate when we are the only ones who have it. Helzbollah doesn’t have stealth bombers or body armor or 40mm grenade launchers. The foreign insurgeants in Iraq don’t have humvees and tow missles and the taliban doesn’t have laser guided rockets and high tech field surgical units.
We are the best equiped force in the world. How much more weight would you have out troops drag though the desert to get the liberal seal of approval? Define what is inadequate.
The Vietnamese were better off with the US rather than the French trying to colonize them? Hey, maybe you\’re right, maybe napalm is truly the best way to say \’We Love You!\’
They sure would have been better off than with the chinese and viet cong colonizing them. 2 million people died in the purges after the cowardly democrats quit at the moment of victory. Now s. vietnam is another cambodia and nigeria. Nothing says I love you like sending 2 million to their deaths and enslaving the survivors in a communist dictatorship.
People like to describe our actions in the Middle East as a gift to those people, yet the people themselves don\’t look at it that way. You can\’t drop a bomb and expect people to love you for it.
It is a great gift, the gift of freedom from tyranny. And you are confusing the issue, we are not dropping bombs on the people who were gassed and tortured under Saddam, we are drpping bombs on the people who want to become the next Saddam. HUGE difference and the Iraqis are in favor of a free Iraq.
They voted in record numbers for the first time under threat of death, now that is a people who are determined to direct their own destiny.
I’m sure that was a typo, but it was a good one. Are Christians really slaves to an ideology crafted by fancy-robed men throughout modern history? Enquiring minds want to know.
It says Jesus showed the way, not forcible dragged them to salvation. How do you equate a guy telling stories to slavery?
A single mother with zero skills shouldn’t have to pull 80 hour weeks to get by…her kids are going to end up robbing me someday, whether it’s at gunpoint or through money I’ll be spending to keep them incarcerated somewhere.
Wasn’t abortion supposed to be the liberals solution to crimes like this while using the babies to cure the hollywood elite of old age? What would really get the pro-abortion group wet would to force abortion on the poor unless they could pay the tax to prove they could pay for a child until 18.
I waxed religious on KOS after posting this one over there, where I wanted to see Dems go in the upcoming years in terms of Christians:
You are brave, kos isn’t a group known for tolerance of other people’s views or free speech. Did you get any threats?
That’s a new one. I was positive that Nixon was a Republican.
I was just making a little jokey jokey about your typo. No offense. I’m sure Jesus was a good guy, and I would like to drink some wine with him. He’s the perfect drinking buddy. Limitless wine, and he won’t hit on your chick.
I completely hear what you are saying about fair pay Al. I can’t imagine trying to provide food/clothing/shelter for my family on a minimum wage 40 hour week. But I do have to say that I work much more than 40 myself. I work a regular 8-5 job, and I work contract work on the side. I usually have 2 or 3 contracts running simultaneously. It is a struggle, and I’m tired. When I was younger I was a treeplanter, fisherman, food service worker, etc. The equivalent of a ditch digger, at least on the pay scale. At age 25 it occurred to me that I was headed nowhere, so I went back to college and got my degree. Three years after finishing that I went back again and got my graduate while working full time. Life is hard, and you’ve got to be constantly on your toes to make it (unless you’re blessed with a wealthy family). Natural selection’s a bitch, and just being American doesn’t make you immune to the natural selection process (although it’s definitely an advantage).
I’m no Christian, but I do believe that they are on to something with their belief in armageddon. It’s like the shipbuilder on the Titanic said… “it’s a mathematical certainty”. Exponential population growth. Exponential resource depletion. It is a recipe for only one thing. Hate to be a doomsayer, but I think a real shake up is inevitable. To quote our very wise Sec of State… “what we are seeing now are birth pangs”. Unfortunately I think it will be the birth of a real war, that will be really terrible.
Jeez, now I need to go smoke a little and chill out. I’ve gone and depressed myself. Later dudes.
So we don’t want to armor up the Humvees because the soldiers have to carry them? You compare our equipment with that of the enemy, which is happening more and more now…well at least we’re better equiped than the sand people…it’s sad that our standard comes down to that over time. Defeat is certainly at hand when such rationalizations come into play.
A lot of my former employees were dedicated, hard working, but unable to type a coherent email or speak proper english. They were making more than minimum wage, but what they were doing used to be considered ‘white collar’…the new factories of today’s America are desk jobs indoors where transactions are processed…paper isn’t pushed anymore, as that’s all scanning, and once a programmer figures out a way to have the computer do their work on its own, it will become a reality.
You have the ability to write a cogent argument using proper English grammar, and probably could do the same before you turned 25. I don’t have a clue what these people I’ve known actually DID to receive their high school degrees, but it scares the shit out of me sometimes.
I can go out and get what I want, because I’m motivated and smart enough to do so – BUT – we’re producing millions of fellow Americans who cannot, and once the human brain hits a certain age, learning new tricks isn’t as easy as it once was. Some of the people I had to let go…I cringe at the thought of what the hell they ended up doing afterwards.
The frustration over not being able to do certain things required to move up in the world can hit them in different ways…some show ambivilence, typically the young ones, but the older ones are more along the lines of frustration or dispair…the processor speed and RAM aren’t upgrading…
This isn’t the case for most, but a percentage of them are simply done in terms of progression, especially the ones paying half their salary on rent while taking public transportation 90 minutes to and from the job every day. I don’t know…it’s not like there’s a malicious feeling towards someone whose just not good enough to be around, on the payroll, regardless of the shit you catch from your boss about it…but when they find themselves out on their ass, it’s a good chance that for a while at least, they’ll be making that minimum wage doing something horrible.
So for a 55 year old woman fired for being unable to adapt to the changes of the business over time, leaving a 12$/hour job…I’d like to think that they’d have something better than $5.15/hour to start over with. They’re not all capable of getting better like you, me or RT – and to work all the way to that age, ignorant and lazy or not, a 40 hour week working, 80% of that shouldn’t be spent on rent…shit, might as well get good at selling drugs or stealing shit.
The minimum wage is a statement about how much we value our ‘neighbors’…and not those on either side of us, but the ‘neighbors’ Jesus was talking about. America’s a fucked up place, schizophrenic in how so many of us envoke Jesus, yet stick our noses up at the plight of our neighbors, fail in every sense of the task in terms of putting ourselves in their shoes.
We thumb our noses at the second commandment as a nation. Sure we can list off all kinds of foreign aid, but why the hell am I proud of that when the ghettos of THIS COUNTRY are growing more and more hopeless and fucked up by the day?
Rush Limbaugh a while back (when I listened to it) listed off the foreign aid we provide to Africa – and that satisfies plenty of people when they look at how the niggers (how we as a culture unfortunately still view them) in New Orleans were treated after Katrina.
Right…aid to niggers in Africa makes up for leaving our own to die in a flood. That’s the logic – and the logic behind not raising the minimum wage has to do with selfishness we’re all familiar with but too pussified as a country to every do anything about!
I’ve got mine, so that’s all I care about…oh, and let me get my hypocritical ass on down to church on Sunday…
I think we’re collectively full of shit! The obviousness of this is all around us now.
I think you are correct. But when you say “value” do you mean dollar value? Because that’s what it boils down to. Me paying more for the same service, whether it’s an inattentive checkout girl at Walmart, or a dirty burger flipper at McDonalds.
You won’t like this, but you know what I’d like to see the minimum wage set at? How about $.05. That’s right. Five cents. If they are worth more then the business owner can easily offer them more to keep them. I don’t see the sense in encouraging low-end performance. If you want public welfare then just tax corporations more and pay low end workers govt public assistance. Don’t disguise welfare as a minimum wage. There is absolutely no incentive to do better work, or strive for excellence with a blanket minimum wage increase.
I went to McDonalds a couple of weeks ago to buy my kid an ice cream cone. The place was staffed with teenagers who obviously didn’t have a single care about the level of service they were providing me (or the other 8 people in line with me). Give these folks more money? Nope. And if a minimum wage increase went through and McDonalds had to raise their prices, I would re-evalute the value proposition they were offering. Is the crappy service and same old satisfactory ice cream cone worth the extra $$$?
Rather than pay their shitty employees (admitted gross generalization) more money, I would rather tax those food service corporations and stick those tax revenues into a health program account(that would most likely be used by the food service employees).
That’s a common misconception. Read Freakonomics”. He identifies why most drug dealers still live at home with their moms. I’ll give you the skinny. Organized drug distribution networks behave very much like corporations. Competition is intense, and the few at the top make the majority of the profits. Don’t you love capitalism?
And that’s what gives me a competitive edge in the job market. You are advocating for dulling that edge. At the end of the day it is about me (and you) and making sure OUR families are taken care of. Because the reality is that we COULD end up in the same place as the 55 year old woman you described, and it is ONLY our own hard work and ingenuity that will lift us up. Not a govt minimum wage or welfare program.
Now, excuse me gentlemen. I’m late for church.
Supply and demand will not alone ensure an honest day’s pay for an honest day’s work. You’re citing kids working at McDonalds, yet I should expect anything more from an organization that staffs its restaurants with that age group? Do you think a brokerage or insurance company would last long in the market staffing their offices with teenagers?
The $.99 menu isn’t going away if the minimum wage is raised, and the service isn’t going to improve either. I don’t think that’s the point to be honest. Service at a fast food restaurant…if we’re demanding better, we probably shouldn’t be eating there in the first place.
The minimum wage would cut into McDonald’s profit margin…which goes to my essay a while back about whether we were a nation of citizens, people – OR – stockprices. It seems like the stockprices win out in just about every instance. Why shouldn’t the workers win once in a while? Because you’re not satisfied with the service you received at a fast food joint that relies on high school kids to run it?