A
few months ago a Pittsburgh labor attorney and human rights activist,
Dan Kovalik, penned an op-ed piece for a Western Pennsylvania daily,
The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Kovalik took up the case of an
elderly adjunct professor at a local private university who died
virtually penniless, with insecure shelter, and with tenuous health
care. In the several hundred words allowed him, Kovalik brought
forward Margaret Mary Vojtko's struggle to eke out a living from the
meager salaries offered by adjunct university and college teaching
employment. Kovalik made no effort to disguise his own solution: he
noted that he met Vojtko in the midst of a union organizing campaign,
a campaign which promised some relief from the poverty level wages
and absent benefits provided by the well-endowed university.
To
probably everyone's surprise, Kovalik's account sparked an enormous
burst of commentary and interest in the cause of highly educated, but
poorly paid university teachers. Other adjuncts realized that their
plight was not uncommon, but shared by thousands working in academic
institutions throughout the US. The story of Margaret Mary's tragic
demise lifted spirits and provoked anger.
Predictably,
the Pittsburgh institution that employed Vojtko, Duquesne University,
mounted a feeble, but loud defense. Nonetheless, Kovalik's article
pressed school administrators to bargain with the union and imparted
meaning to a senseless tragedy. In the hard-hitting and noble
tradition of muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair, Lincoln
Stephens, and Ida B. Wells, Kovalik offered Vojtko's story as a case
study in the plight of thousands of underpaid and exploited college
and university level teachers.
Unfortunately,
the valuable muck-raking tradition, like whistle blowing, is
considered bad sport in the age of stifling corporate journalism and
rampant toadyism. Extremely rare socially relevant journalism is
either accidental journalism or revelation wrapped in scandal, smut,
or corruption. Today's young journalist with an eye to a career
understands that entertainment metrics trump shaking a fist to power,
that “reality” voyeurism titillates the passive reader, and that
ferreting out injustice doesn't pay.
In
that vein, Slate magazine, a journal that appeals to
middle-class social liberalism, unleashed an assistant editor, L. V.
Anderson, to doggedly dig up the real story of Margaret Mary
Vojtko (Death of a Professor, 11-17-2013). Undoubtedly Slate's
founder, Michael Kinsley, an old Cold Warrior transformed into a
leading spokesperson for post-Reagan liberalism, could smell a
radical message in the Kovalik article. The subversive Kovalik was
actually suggesting that institutions owed a decent living to their
employees! He had the audacity to imply that some employees-- those
without trust funds-- actually depend upon their employers for their
survival! Such a view offends the sensibilities of our betters who
are confident of the many charities and helping hands that are always
there for the asking.
Dutiful
to her assignment, Anderson visited Pittsburgh on a mission:
Kovalik’s not-so-subtle implication was that if Duquesne had negotiated, Vojtko might not have died the way she did...
But was that true? Who was Margaret Mary—the person, not the symbol of victimhood?
Through
a journey of several thousand words, Anderson familiarized us with
personal details of Vojtko's life-- a veritable made-for-TV reality
exposé-- cobbled together from interviews
with people who have no fear of contradiction or explanation from the
dead. She shares with the reader idiosyncrasies, hardships, and
foibles that are embedded in every life, but only deemed relevant in
our era of embarrassing mass titillation.
We
learn that an eighty-three-year-old woman is untidy, forgetful, rigid
in her views, mistrustful, and doggedly independent. How these
personal attributes bear on her treatment by Duquesne University is
left unexplained; how many of us share these personal “flaws” is
never addressed. But the not-too-subtle point is that Vojtko could
have fared better if she would only have shed her stubbornness and
accepted the help that many claim was there.
Undoubtedly
that view is held by those who obstinately refuse to accept any
responsibility for the behavior of institutions that dominate our
lives. Their indifference to the casualties wrought by banks,
corporations, insurance companies, universities, military, and
government agencies leave millions of Margaret Mary Vojtkos to the
not-so-tender mercies of these institutions.
After six thousand tedious words of the minutia and trivia of Vojtko's life, one may be convinced by Anderson that a human life is indeed complex:
The story I uncovered was more complicated than the story that went viral. The reasons Vojtko’s life ended in misery had much less to do with her status as an adjunct professor than tweeters... might believe.To be fair to the university, though, better benefits and job security would not have altered many of the personal factors that precipitated Vojtko’s crisis. Her hoarding and her deep-seated stubbornness—not her finances—were behind her refusal to get her furnace fixed, or to move to a facility better suited to her medical condition.
To
be fair?
To
be fair, Anderson would have interviewed any of the thousands of
working class retirees living in Western Pennsylvania who would have
told her that Vojtko's “stubbornness” was pride-- a pride born of
the belief that when a man or woman works hard all of his or her
life, he or she should have a measure of benefits and security
without begging or accepting charity. Anderson would understand that
motives, like lives, are complex even for those on the bottom rungs
of the economic ladder. As do many other workers, Votjko valued her
dignity, privacy, and independence. They were not easily surrendered
to accept charity or even well-meant help. Those with a finely honed
sense of justice are not quick to trade it for the work house or the
charity ward, even in its modern incarnations.
It's
a pity that those values are neither understood nor shared by
Anderson. When a hundred years ago Upton Sinclair wrote of the
workers exploited by the meat packing industry, he undoubtedly knew
that many were flawed in character or values. But presenting them in
all of their “multidimensional” character, revealing their
weaknesses, or pandering to gossip was of little interest to him.
Instead, he wrote of the horrific working conditions, brutality, and
misery brought on by the industry. He chose to take the side of the
weak over the strong.
Today,
inequality has reached the extremes of Sinclair's time, yet most of
our media chroniclers deliberately ignore the damaged lives,
shattered hopes, and even premature deaths spawned by inequality.
Turning away from these ugly facts, they-- like L. V. Anderson--
offer casual, flippant bromides: pick up the phone and call for help!
As our political leaders work diligently to disassemble the social
securities protecting the poor and needy, more and more of our
neighbors face the choice of relying on goodwill or accepting a
shattered life.
We
should be grateful that there are writers like Dan Kovalik who speak
out against these outrages.
Zoltan Zigedy
zoltanzigedy@gmail.com
6 comments:
Brilliant. Didn't know how to articulate my thoughts on the L.V. anderson and even worse "callmemiss" pieces out there.
You said it! Thank you.
Thank you. Excellently put.
Brilliant. Didn't know how to articulate my thoughts on the L.V. anderson and even worse "callmemiss" pieces out there.
You said it! Thank you.
Hi,
I just read your important and beautiful article in CounterPunch, then found your site.
Thank you so much for it.
There are detestable ideas fomented at Slate ? Say it ain't so...lol,
It's too bad some people's sense of outrage does not better wisely travel inwards.
L. V. Anderson is creepily nothing more than a giddy wee sycophant dancing on strangers grave.
j.l.stix
phila pa
Hi,
i forgot the "a" at the end
of my comment, as in
"a strangers grave."
thank you
j.l stix
im not sure slate can even be considered social liberal at this point. Weigal, a journalist there, is a former Koch magazine journalist that still carries water for libertarianism.
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