Hobson's Choice
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Mike Brown
I found myself feeling some unwilling and grudging sympathy toward erstwhile FEMA head Mike Brown this morning.
I was thinking about the metaphor or parenthood as job. My mom often reminds me that this really is "the toughest job you'll ever love." I like the idea; it makes me feel less guilty when I'm bored out of my head at playing "Mrs. Norris and Mrs. Rieger, Lost in the Woods" or "Big Bird Goes to the Doctor" for the 1000th time. What job doesn't have its boring moments? It's not terrible to be bored at your job.
But then this morning, I got to thinking about how taking car of a small child differs from a job out there in the "real world." First, almost all jobs offer a variety of external compensation and motivation from wages to boondoggles to the occasional free lunch. America's weirdness (inequity, brutality) toward childcar and chlidren has been well-documented. I don't need to spell it all out here.
But here are the other differences: all jobs have some form of periodic, formalized evaluation. Somebody's got a form, a report, a whatever, and they come in and tell you how you're doing. They have measures, they have objectives, they have goals. Parents, on the other hand, have no way of measuring our progress. And here's where Mike Brown comes in: occasionally, someone may throw us a non-specific "You're doing a heck of job, Brownie," but we all know that if my child becomes the equivalent of the Superdome, my head is the one that's going to roll.
And frankly, most of us parents have even more ludricrous prior job experiences than Arabian Horse Judge.
I'm glad Mike Brown is off the job; he made a selfish, distastrous mess that cost people lives. The question is: how would I know if I were screwing up that badly?
10:58 a.m. - 2005-11-08
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