Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Humble Beginnings
Now, I’m the last person to try and defend the non-intellect AOC has displayed before, during, and after her election. However, I see some trends we conservatives are using when describing her, and it isn’t right.
Actually, it’s also on the left, but let’s bring it up. I see articles about how this “bartender” ended up getting elected. My personal disdain for her aside, why imply someone who was “merely” a bartender can’t represent her district? Next, you’ll be saying a Manhattan real estate billionaire can’t be President.
My point is we should not disparage the previous occupations of elected officials. Don’t you want accomplished citizens to leave the private sector (briefly, I hope) and represent us in office?
My very first job was at age 16, cleaning hubcaps at Jet Car Wash in Raleigh. After that, I worked for a lawn care company, then UPS senior year as a package sorter before graduating and going to college. Even then, I worked as a cashier-stocker for a friend’s grocery store after my sophomore year at NC State, as well as for my neighbor who owned an electrical contracting company. There are times I think I’d make a damn good representative in the House, but my love of sanity, retirement, and reality know better.
As for bartending, I’m acquainted with one bartender who became a millionaire. He now owns a bar and several others (along with his wife). The bottom line? Let’s not knock the former occupations of the opposition’s people. It makes us look stupid, as well as too good to represent anyone…
Published in General
I certainly don’t see a problem with it.
If you promised to continue acting like you were retired, I’d vote for you.
I agree: the regular jobs of normal people deserve respect. As William F. Buckley famously observed, I’d rather be governed by the first 2,000 people listed in the American Bartenders’ Association Membership Roster, 2019 Edition than anyone elected by the residents of New York City.
I enjoyed your post, but will offer two suggestions.
But back to the bigger point: yes, at least as a bartender, she was adding to the net value of America, rather than subtracting from it.
Agreed. I love my bartender. She has my beer ready and on the bar when she sees me walking in from the parking lot. Also, is there a UPS recruitment center on the NCState campus? I can’t tell you how many people I know that worked that same job while going to State.
LO! I am acting like I’m retired! I’m spouting get-of-my-lawn nonsense, expecting people to applaud me for my audacity . . .
I used to include the sing-song “Jimmy Carta, Peanut Farma” in my rantings about the former president. Years ago, Jay Nordlinger told the story that he too used to use that ditty. Then someone explained to him, in a manner similar to your post, that farming shouldn’t be used as a cut against Mr. Carter. Jay stopped using the ditty and I did too after hearing that podcast episode.
I try to not disparage former jobs of opponents. Thank you for another reminder for why that is.
I use “AOC” because I’m lazy, and I have carpal tunnel. Sometimes, my finger joints go numb if I type to much.
I think she’s very pretty, even though I’ve called her “Jaws” when she opens her mouth wide. As for “hot”, I’ll go with it. I’m 63, so I have no qualms about using a term reserved for 30 and under. Why? I’m retired, and don’t give a ****!
I thought that kind of thing was illegal.
I’m willing to listen to alternate suggestions that don’t consist of me typing out her full name every time. I’m also willing for one of those suggestions to be that we don’t talk about her.
Stad, I think you are right. As one who has a small interest in a couple of restaurants a good bartender can be a key to a good business. Perhaps she was a good one, who knows. Her looks probably helped.
It’s too bad that her working class kind of job didn’t give her any real empathy for working class folks and the dismal plight her Socialist Democrat Allies have driven them into with their nutcase solutions. Perhaps she had too many shooters too many times and fried her brain. Or did too many drugs. (An occupational hazard of bartenders in hipster joints.)
Hey some of my best friends are bartenders. I actually knew an honest one once, I think.
Except actors. I think we should knock them every chance we get.
I object to the characterization of her as a “just a humble bartender” in the first place, given how many activist and organizer positions she held between 2011 and 2018.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexandria_Ocasio-Cortez#Early_career
They may not have all been paid positions, but that’s not really the point. After all, an actor who also tends bar to help pay the bills while they take low-paid acting jobs isn’t “just a bartender”.
She’s not a bartender who just happened to get elected to Congress. She’s a political activist who tended bar to pay for her real career.
If she was that good she would have committed to it instead of treating it as just a way to subsidize her real career.
I don’t know if I would rate Alexandria as hot, but she is pretty. That being said, I don’t know how well she was at bar tending, but she appears to have a sort of “sparkling” personality that reminds me of a lyric line from Billy Joel’s “Piano Man”:
“Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there’s someplace that he’d rather be”
In my opinion, good bartenders are like good doctors, lawyers, and auto mechanics – they are few and far between.
I also agree, however, I respect them more when they commit to that industry as a career.
There’s nothing wrong to having been bartender or any other humble job. If anything that helps her politically.
I did love what Andrew Klavan called AOC. Alexandria Occasional-Cortex. ;) That’s a pretty funny pun. And I don’t think it’s below the belt.
Yeah, and we need an additional dispensation for sneering at community organizers.
Howzabout we get a short list of professions that should disqualify one from being taken seriously for public service?
I agree with your stated point, but she has degrees from prestigious universities in Economics and International Relations. Yet has never had a job in a field remotely related to her fancy-pants education. Presumably she was incapable of getting one. Citing her bartending is not a knock on bartending – it’s a knock on her inability to find useful employment related to her education while she lectures us on topics supposedly related to her education.
[And she routinely demonstrates her incompetence and ignorance in the very fields of her prestigious university degrees.]
Nor does she seem to exhibit the wiliness of bartenders, at least not that of those with whom I’ve been acquainted. (On an irregular, casual basis. Just to be clear. Ahem.)
Nothing wrong tending bar for a few months. The problem is that is the full extent of her experience. Based on what she says (assuming she is not trolling us and pretending to be dumb to get free publicity), she learned nothing in college and BU should be embarrassed. After she gets primaried in 2020 she can go to Harvard with David Hogg and study law. Or, she can be Sec. of Treasury for Pres. Francis “Beto” O’Rourke.
I think we should call her Ms. Cortez, accentuating her possible descent from the eponymous Spanish imperialist conquistador.
Or Carla Marx?
Cortez works just fine.
Maybe we could call her aoc.
I’m wondering what kind of tips he got . . .
Maybe she too many old, white, rich geezers proposition her. Too bad. All the seemingly menial jobs I had before I graduated from college prepared me for the “work” part of all my future employment. It also prepared me how to work with other people toward a common goal.
Lots of folks take on a non-career job to pay the bills until they get “discovered.” Like the song says:
“And all the stars that never were, are parking cars and pumping gas.”
I respect anyone who works hard, whether they intend to make the job they’re doing a career or not. Just sayin’ . . .
I prefer we not talk about her at all, but it seems we must.
I can’t get used to calling her AOC, however. I’m a big fan of the video game Age of Empires (AOE) and especially its expansion pack, Age of Empires: The Conquerors, which will always be AOC to me. It’s an older game now, but it’s a classic I still find myself returning to.
Call me a crazy optimist but… I don’t think the same will be said of Rep. Ocasio-Cortez.