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If you haven&#39;t read the news lately, the phrase on the lips of every politician, pundit and pollster is still &quot;jobs.&quot; Now, however, the debate has shifted &lt;img src=&quot;http://content.screencast.com/users/AlexTuttle/folders/Jing/media/7cbfbb7c-1d48-4320-9025-00f77ba0eb86/benstein.png&quot; border=&quot;1&quot; align=&quot;RIGHT&quot;/&gt;to the necessity of unemployment benefit extensions, with some suggesting that continued funding of jobless citizens only breeds laziness and complacency. As if being out-of-work wasn&#39;t bad enough, America&#39;s unemployed find themselves as a two-sided token for political debate, either martyred as faceless victims of economic turmoil or vilified as shiftless layabouts.&lt;p&gt;The result has been an increasing number of disparaging public remarks from political figures, most of whom assume the worst about jobless professionals&#39; circumstances. The foremost example of this came in a recent editorial by pundit and former game show host Ben Stein, wherein he opined that those still without jobs perhaps deserve it:&lt;/p&gt;&lt;blockquote&gt;“The people who have been laid off and cannot find work are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities. I say &#39;generally&#39; because there are exceptions. But in general, as I survey the ranks of those who are unemployed, I see people who have overbearing and unpleasant personalities and/or who do not know how to do a day’s work. They are people who create either little utility or negative utility on the job.”&lt;/blockquote&gt;&lt;p&gt;Similar assertions have been made by former House Majority Leader Tom Delay, who claimed in a CNN interview to know of studies &quot;that show that people stay on unemployment compensation, and they don&#39;t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out.&quot; Ron Johnson, a U.S. Senate candidate in Wisconsin, echoed Delay&#39;s sentiment during a public television interview: &quot;When you continue to extend unemployment benefits, people really don&#39;t have the incentive to go take other jobs. They&#39;ll just wait the system out … Then they&#39;ll go out and take probably not as high paying jobs as they&#39;d like to take.&quot; Johnson advised, &quot;That&#39;s really how you have to get back to work. You have to take the work that&#39;s available at the wage rates that&#39;s available.”&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In the spirit of fairness over these allegations, I&#39;ve offered an opportunity for rebuttal to one such unemployed citizen: Joe the Computer Operator. At age 51, Joe handled systems administration for a chemical company until three years ago, when he was laid off and saw his job outsourced. Without a source of income, he says, &quot;I had to move in with a friend because I could no longer pay my rent.&quot; Joe states he will &quot;send out hundreds of resumes,&quot; but &quot;99 percent of the time I do not get any response.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So what does Joe say about Delay and Johnson&#39;s comments? Quite simply, &quot;I do not agree.&quot; &quot;I have continued to look for work while I was receiving my unemployment benefits. I am sure that some do not look for a job while collecting benefits but I feel the majority of us want to work and do look for employment.&quot; Of particular note was Johnson&#39;s &quot;take the work that&#39;s available&quot; remark, to which Joe retorts, &quot;It is easy for someone to say &#39;You should take a minimum wage job,&#39; but then when I ask &#39;Well, how do I pay my bills and survive while making $8 an hour?&#39; they never have an answer. The math just doesn&#39;t add up.&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;At Ben Stein&#39;s descriptions of &quot;poor work habits&quot; and &quot;unpleasant personalities,&quot; Joe bristles, &quot;This sounds like profiling and discrimination to me. Just once I would like to see a dope like this have to walk in the long-term unemployed shoes. The bottom line is that there are no jobs—just look at the numbers. We can&#39;t all have poor personalities and bad work habits, can we, Stein?&quot;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For Joe, meanwhile, the search for work continues. &quot;I am sending out my resume today for a Computer Operator position I found on one of the many job boards I receive daily email alerts for. Maybe I will get a positive response from this one, but I doubt it.&quot; Discouraged words, to be sure. But after seeing the insensitivity toward unemployed professionals like Joe, it&#39;s not hard to understand the frustration.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&lt;em&gt;-- Alex Tuttle, Vault.com&lt;/em&gt;&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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