Writes Maureen Dowd, who's been looking closely at the Bushes for a long time. ("In 1993, I went on the road to watch Jeb run for governor in Florida and W. run for governor in Texas.... It was soon clear to me that the Good Son was not as scintillating a campaigner as the Prodigal Son... This was going to be the year that settled sibling scores. Jeb would get what his parents considered his birthright....")
I was interested in the phrase "divided the world into Bushes and the help." The help. That reminds me of a discussion here on the blog the other day. I'd written "Majed Abdulaziz Al-Saud allegedly yelled at 3 female servants in his mansion near Beverly Hills," and a commenter, Carol, said: "I had no idea they were still called 'servants' in this country." And SOJO said: "Servants"? Wtf? Employees." I scrambled to defend myself against what I see as a charge of political incorrectness. I posted 4 comments in quick succession.
1. I took responsibility:
That was my word choice. The LA Times called them "workers."2. I defended myself:
What's wrong with "servants"? If something is wrong with it, then we shouldn't have switched to calling waiters and waitresses "servers."3. I re-defended myself:
"Servants" seems like the right word for people who occupy the servants' quarters within a house, especially when the reference is to a big estate with a lot of personnel serving a rich person, a person who might say things like this prince did. ["I am a prince and I do what I want! You are nobody!"]4. I retreated into scholarship and distanced humility:
From the OED, there's this historical context that might explain an aversion to the word: "b. In the North American colonies in the 17–18th c., and subsequently in the United States, servant was the usual designation for a slave.... 1852 H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin II. xxii. 67 Why don't we teach our servants to read?"The idea that "employees" was the right word struck me as wrong. Particular jobs have names, and "employee" isn't the name of a job. What's the name for employees who live in someone else's house and do all sorts of work that might be required within the household? Is it the word Dowd used, "help"? Or did Dowd use "help" because it's amusing to deploy somebody else's euphemism? Is "servant" insulting?
Oddly enough, Jeb Bush likes to call himself a "servant":
"There are a lot of talkers in politics," Bush said. "Trust me, I was on the debate stage, I see it; some really good people that are really good talkers. I hope you want someone with a servant's heart, that acts on principles — that does things rather than just talks about them."
Posts
