For all the talk these days of how to revive our supposedly moribund American Dream, it took a college dropout-turned-actor to state the obvious.
“I believe that opportunity looks a lot like work,” Ashton Kutcher recently said at the Teen Choice Awards. “I never had a job in my life that I was better than. I was always just lucky to have a job. And every job I had was a stepping stone to my next job, and I never quit my job until I had my next job. And so opportunities look a lot like work.”
That such remarks made national headlines is revealing of the battered state of our once robust culture of work. In America, we no longer extol hard work the way we used to. For every movie that celebrates drive and dedication, Hollywood churns out dozens featuring irresponsible, dim-witted, lazy bumblers. The “work is for suckers” mentality is no longer confined to a few marginal Huck Finns: “Seinfeld’s” permanently unemployed Kramer is a cultural icon.
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