End of the American Dream?

A frighteningly surreal video report about people living along "Foreclosure Alley" in California who are losing their homes. Shown are "trashout" crews that ferry valuable belongings to the dump instead of selling them, guys who paint brown lawns green to increase abandoned homes' marketability, and swimming pool drainers fighting West Nile virus. Props to Andrew Sullivan for finding and posting this initially.

In the Sprit of Netslaves: Don't Complain, Says Newsweek: Drive a Truck!

I'm really sorry that Steve Gilliard isn't around to skewer the clueless editors who ran a story on Newsweek.com praising the fact that more Americans over 50, facing a cruel job market, are now driving trucks.

Sure, driving a truck is surely better than being completely unemployed, but packaging what's clearly a desperate act as a savvy career move is insane. "Despite the grueling hours and physical demands, it can be a win-win situation," writes Newsweek, without speaking to a single old-timer willing to characterize his downward economic mobility as anything but a wonderful thing. Newsweek obviously only spoke to a couple of drivers in its story, and naturally, they didn't want to say they felt like failures.

The real story, however, the fact that trained, educated, downsized people over 50 are failing in ever-greater numbers, being humiliatingly reduced to blue-collar labor status, will remain for some other publication to find.