Barack Obama: The Audacity of Hope: 1994 Democratic Party Convention

Posts Tagged Barack Obama Barack Obama gave this speech in 2004 when he was a candidate for the Senate in Illinois, four years before he entered the White House as president.

The transcript can be found at the AmericanRhetoric.com website.

[wp-video-floater]

Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you so much. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Dick Durbin. You make us all proud.

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, Land of Lincoln, let me express my deepest gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention.

Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let’s face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father — my grandfather — was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.

But my grandfather had larger dreams for his son. Through hard work and perseverance my father got a scholarship to study in a magical place, America, that shone as a beacon of freedom and opportunity to so many who had come before.

While studying here, my father met my mother. She was born in a town on the other side of the world, in Kansas. Her father worked on oil rigs and farms through most of the Depression. The day after Pearl Harbor my grandfather signed up for duty; joined Patton’s army, marched across Europe. Back home, my grandmother raised a baby and went to work on a bomber assembly line. After the war, they studied on the G.I. Bill, bought a house through F.H.A., and later moved west all the way to Hawaii in search of opportunity.

And they, too, had big dreams for their daughter. A common dream, born of two continents.

My parents shared not only an improbable love, they shared an abiding faith in the possibilities of this nation. They would give me an African name, Barack, or ”blessed,” believing that in a tolerant America your name is no barrier to success. They imagined — They imagined me going to the best schools in the land, even though they weren’t rich, because in a generous America you don’t have to be rich to achieve your potential.

They’re both passed away now. And yet, I know that on this night they look down on me with great pride.

They stand here — And I stand here today, grateful for the diversity of my heritage, aware that my parents’ dreams live on in my two precious daughters. I stand here knowing that my story is part of the larger American story, that I owe a debt to all of those who came before me, and that, in no other country on earth, is my story even possible.

Tonight, we gather to affirm the greatness of our Nation — not because of the height of our skyscrapers, or the power of our military, or the size of our economy. Our pride is based on a very simple premise, summed up in a declaration made over two hundred years ago:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

That is the true genius of America, a faith — a faith in simple dreams, an insistence on small miracles; that we can tuck in our children at night and know that they are fed and clothed and safe from harm; that we can say what we think, write what we think, without hearing a sudden knock on the door; that we can have an idea and start our own business without paying a bribe; that we can participate in the political process without fear of retribution, and that our votes will be counted — at least most of the time.

This year, in this election we are called to reaffirm our values and our commitments, to hold them against a hard reality and see how we’re measuring up to the legacy of our forbearers and the promise of future generations.

And fellow Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Independents, I say to you tonight: We have more work to do — more work to do for the workers I met in Galesburg, Illinois, who are losing their union jobs at the Maytag plant that’s moving to Mexico, and now are having to compete with their own children for jobs that pay seven bucks an hour; more to do for the father that I met who was losing his job and choking back the tears, wondering how he would pay 4500 dollars a month for the drugs his son needs without the health benefits that he counted on; more to do for the young woman in East St. Louis, and thousands more like her, who has the grades, has the drive, has the will, but doesn’t have the money to go to college.

Now, don’t get me wrong. The people I meet — in small towns and big cities, in diners and office parks — they don’t expect government to solve all their problems. They know they have to work hard to get ahead, and they want to. Go into the collar counties around Chicago, and people will tell you they don’t want their tax money wasted, by a welfare agency or by the Pentagon. Go in — Go into any inner city neighborhood, and folks will tell you that government alone can’t teach our kids to learn; they know that parents have to teach, that children can’t achieve unless we raise their expectations and turn off the television sets and eradicate the slander that says a black youth with a book is acting white. They know those things.

People don’t expect — People don’t expect government to solve all their problems. But they sense, deep in their bones, that with just a slight change in priorities, we can make sure that every child in America has a decent shot at life, and that the doors of opportunity remain open to all.

They know we can do better. And they want that choice.

In this election, we offer that choice. Our Party has chosen a man to lead us who embodies the best this country has to offer. And that man is John Kerry.

John Kerry understands the ideals of community, faith, and service because they’ve defined his life. From his heroic service to Vietnam, to his years as a prosecutor and lieutenant governor, through two decades in the United States Senate, he’s devoted himself to this country. Again and again, we’ve seen him make tough choices when easier ones were available.

His values and his record affirm what is best in us. John Kerry believes in an America where hard work is rewarded; so instead of offering tax breaks to companies shipping jobs overseas, he offers them to companies creating jobs here at home.

John Kerry believes in an America where all Americans can afford the same health coverage our politicians in Washington have for themselves.

John Kerry believes in energy independence, so we aren’t held hostage to the profits of oil companies, or the sabotage of foreign oil fields.

John Kerry believes in the Constitutional freedoms that have made our country the envy of the world, and he will never sacrifice our basic liberties, nor use faith as a wedge to divide us.

And John Kerry believes that in a dangerous world war must be an option sometimes, but it should never be the first option.

You know, a while back — awhile back I met a young man named Shamus in a V.F.W. Hall in East Moline, Illinois. He was a good-looking kid — six two, six three, clear eyed, with an easy smile. He told me he’d joined the Marines and was heading to Iraq the following week. And as I listened to him explain why he’d enlisted, the absolute faith he had in our country and its leaders, his devotion to duty and service, I thought this young man was all that any of us might ever hope for in a child.

But then I asked myself, “Are we serving Shamus as well as he is serving us?”

I thought of the 900 men and women — sons and daughters, husbands and wives, friends and neighbors, who won’t be returning to their own hometowns. I thought of the families I’ve met who were struggling to get by without a loved one’s full income, or whose loved ones had returned with a limb missing or nerves shattered, but still lacked long-term health benefits because they were Reservists.

When we send our young men and women into harm’s way, we have a solemn obligation not to fudge the numbers or shade the truth about why they’re going, to care for their families while they’re gone, to tend to the soldiers upon their return, and to never ever go to war without enough troops to win the war, secure the peace, and earn the respect of the world.

Now — Now let me be clear. Let me be clear. We have real enemies in the world. These enemies must be found. They must be pursued. And they must be defeated. John Kerry knows this. And just as Lieutenant Kerry did not hesitate to risk his life to protect the men who served with him in Vietnam, President Kerry will not hesitate one moment to use our military might to keep America safe and secure.

John Kerry believes in America. And he knows that it’s not enough for just some of us to prosper — for alongside our famous individualism, there’s another ingredient in the American saga, a belief that we’re all connected as one people. If there is a child on the south side of Chicago who can’t read, that matters to me, even if it’s not my child. If there is a senior citizen somewhere who can’t pay for their prescription drugs, and having to choose between medicine and the rent, that makes my life poorer, even if it’s not my grandparent. If there’s an Arab American family being rounded up without benefit of an attorney or due process, that threatens my civil liberties.

It is that fundamental belief — It is that fundamental belief: I am my brother’s keeper. I am my sister’s keeper that makes this country work. It’s what allows us to pursue our individual dreams and yet still come together as one American family.

E pluribus unum: “Out of many, one.”

Now even as we speak, there are those who are preparing to divide us — the spin masters, the negative ad peddlers who embrace the politics of “anything goes.” Well, I say to them tonight, there is not a liberal America and a conservative America — there is the United States of America. There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America — there’s the United States of America.

The pundits, the pundits like to slice-and-dice our country into Red States and Blue States; Red States for Republicans, Blue States for Democrats. But I’ve got news for them, too. We worship an “awesome God” in the Blue States, and we don’t like federal agents poking around in our libraries in the Red States. We coach Little League in the Blue States and yes, we’ve got some gay friends in the Red States. There are patriots who opposed the war in Iraq and there are patriots who supported the war in Iraq. We are one people, all of us pledging allegiance to the stars and stripes, all of us defending the United States of America.

In the end — In the end — In the end, that’s what this election is about. Do we participate in a politics of cynicism or do we participate in a politics of hope?

John Kerry calls on us to hope. John Edwards calls on us to hope.

I’m not talking about blind optimism here — the almost willful ignorance that thinks unemployment will go away if we just don’t think about it, or the health care crisis will solve itself if we just ignore it. That’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about something more substantial. It’s the hope of slaves sitting around a fire singing freedom songs; the hope of immigrants setting out for distant shores; the hope of a young naval lieutenant bravely patrolling the Mekong Delta; the hope of a millworker’s son who dares to defy the odds; the hope of a skinny kid with a funny name who believes that America has a place for him, too.

Hope — Hope in the face of difficulty. Hope in the face of uncertainty. The audacity of hope!

In the end, that is God’s greatest gift to us, the bedrock of this nation. A belief in things not seen. A belief that there are better days ahead.

I believe that we can give our middle class relief and provide working families with a road to opportunity.

I believe we can provide jobs to the jobless, homes to the homeless, and reclaim young people in cities across America from violence and despair.

I believe that we have a righteous wind at our backs and that as we stand on the crossroads of history, we can make the right choices, and meet the challenges that face us.

America! Tonight, if you feel the same energy that I do, if you feel the same urgency that I do, if you feel the same passion that I do, if you feel the same hopefulness that I do — if we do what we must do, then I have no doubt that all across the country, from Florida to Oregon, from Washington to Maine, the people will rise up in November, and John Kerry will be sworn in as President, and John Edwards will be sworn in as Vice President, and this country will reclaim its promise, and out of this long political darkness a brighter day will come.

Thank you very much everybody. God bless you. Thank you.

Julia Roberts: ‘Erin Brockovitch’ – A Lame-Ass Offer

Julia Roberts as Erin Brockovitch, a woman who, despite having no legal background, investigates cases of cancers and illnesses in a poor community caused by contaminated water from a Pacific Gas and Electric plant in Hinkley, California. She went on to win one of the largest settlements in US history agains the plant.

You can read the script at Script-O-Rama. The movie is based on a true story.

[wp-video-floater]

ED (Albert Finney): Counselors –

SANCHEZ (Gina Gallego): Counselors.

SANCHEZ:…Let’s be honest here. Twenty million dollars is more money than these people have ever dreamed of.

ERIN (Julia Roberts): Oh, see, now that pisses me off. First of all — since the demur, we now have more than four hundred plaintiffs…and “let’s be honest”, we all know there are more out there.

Now, they may not be the most sophisticated people, but they do know how to divide, and twenty million dollars isn’t shit when you split it between them.

ED: Erin —

ERIN: And second of all — these people don’t dream about being rich. They dream about being able to watch their kids swim in a pool without worrying they’ll have to have a hysterectomy at the age of 20, like Rosa Diaz — a client of ours — or have their spine deteriorate like Stan Bloom. Another client of ours.

So before you come back here with another lame-ass offer, I want you to think real hard about what your spine is worth, Mr. Walker – or what you’d expect someone to pay you for your uterus, Miss Sanchez — then you take out your calculator and multiply that number by a hundred. Anything less than that is a waste of our time.

By the way, we had that water brought in special for you folks.

Came from a well in Hinkley.

SANCHEZ: I think this meeting is over.

ED: Damn right it is.

Kelly McDonald: ‘The Girl in the Café’, 2005

From the British film The Girl in the Café (2005): Kelly McDonald plays Gina, a girl who falls in love with Lawrence (Bill Nighy) a top civil servant. At a dinner of the G8 leaders she speaks out against poverty. Read the complete film transcript here at Script-O-Rama.com.

Note: ‘indent’ means to make a dent or impression, a small change or effect, and that’s the word given in the transcript. But I think the Prime Minister says “end debt,” although this doesn’t make sense in the sentence. If you would like to see the movie and work out for yourself, get a copy of the DVD here.

[wp-video-floater]

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (Corin Redgrave): Five years ago, the world made a series of the most magnificent promises. And we have determined to use this conference seriously to indent the most extreme curses of poverty in the world today. We shall not let them out of our sights, even if we may not yet have the power to fulfill them all.

Gina: That’s not true. That’s not true…

Prime Minister: Aah, I’m sorry Madam, but heckling isn’t really a tradition at these gatherings.

Gina: What are the traditions, then? Well-crafted compromise and just sort of ignoring the poor?

Prime Minister: Perhaps we can talk about this later?

Gina: I doubt it. I imagine I’ll be thrown out later so it’s probably got to be now. I don’t know how much the rest of you ladies know about what’s going on, but my friend here tells me that while we are eating, a hundred million children are nearly starving. There’s just millions of kids who’d kill for the amount of food that fat old me left on the side of my plate – children who are then so weak they’ll die if a mosquito bites them. And so, they do die, one every three seconds.

There they go. And another one.

Anyone who has kids knows that every mother and father in Africa must love their children as much as they do. And to watch your kids die, to watch them die and then to die yourself in trying to protect them – that’s not right. And tomorrow, eight of the men sitting ’round this table actually have the ability to sort this out by making a few great decisions. And if they don’t, someday, someone else will, and they’ll look back on us lot and say: ‘People were actually dying in their millions unnecessarily, in front of you, on your TV screens. What were you thinking? You knew what to do to stop it happening and you didn’t do those things. Shame on you.’

So that’s what you have to do tomorrow. Be great, instead of being ashamed. It can’t be impossible. It must be possible..

Prime Minister: As I was saying before I was so cogently interrupted…

(End of transcript)

Clark Gable: ‘It Happened One Night’ 1934

Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert in ‘It Happened One Night’ (1934). Read more about the movie on the FilmSite.org movie review site, or more about Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert on Wikipedia.

[wp-video-floater]

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert):
Well, thank you. Thank you very much, but— you’ve been very kind.

Reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable): Oh, yeah? It’s all right with me. Go on out in the storm, but I’m going to follow you, see? Yeah. And if you get tough I’ll just have to turn you over to your old man right now. Savvy? Now that’s my whole plot in a nutshell. A simple story for simple people. Now if you behave yourself, I’ll see that you get to King Westley; if not, I’ll just have to spill the beans to papa. Now which of these beds do you prefer? This one? All right.

Ellie Andrews (Claudette Colbert)That, I suppose, makes everything quite all right.

reporter Peter Warne (Clark Gable): Oh this?

Well, I like privacy when I retire. Yes, I’m very delicate in that respect. Prying eyes annoy me. Behold the walls of Jericho! Uh, maybe not as thick as the ones that Joshua blew down with his trumpet, but a lot safer. You see, uh, I have no trumpet. And just to show you that my heart’s in the right place, I’ll give you my best pair of pajamas. Uh, would you mind joining the Israelites? You don’t want to join the Israelites?

All right. Perhaps you’re interested in how a man undresses. You know, it’s a funny thing about that. Quite a study in psychology. No two men do it alike. You know, I once knew a man who kept his hat on until he was completely undressed. Yeah, now he made a picture. Years later, his secret came out. He wore a toupee. Yeah. Now I have a method all my own. If you notice, the coat came first, then the tie, then the shirt. Now, uh, according to Hoyle, after that, the, uh, pants should be next. There’s where I’m different. I go for the shoes next. First the right. Then the left. After that, it’s, eh, every man for himself.

Mike Rowe: Dirty Work

Mike Rowe, the presenter of the Dirty Jobs program on the Discovery Channel, suggests that we need to change our view of what work means: it’s not just Blackberries and iPhones and comfortable offices.

From the amazing TED lectures: talks from the TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference, where leading thinkers talk on science, business, development and the arts.

[wp-video-floater]

The Dirty Jobs crew and I were called to a little town in Colorado, called Craig. It’s only a couple dozen square miles, it’s in the Rockies. And the job in question was sheep rancher.

My role on the show, for those of you who haven’t seen it — it’s pretty simple. I’m an apprentice, and I work with the people who actually do the jobs in question. And my responsibilities are to simply try and keep up and give an honest account of what it’s like to be these people, for one day in their life. Job in question — herding sheep. Great.

We go to Craig and we check in to a hotel and I realize the next day that castration is going to be an absolute part of this work. So, normally, I never do any research at all. But, this is a touchy subject, and I work for the Discovery Channel, and we want to portray accurately whatever it is we do, and we certainly want to do it with a lot of respect for the animals. So I called the Humane Society and I say “Look, I’m going to be castrating some lambs, Can you tell me the deal?”

And they’re like, “Yeah, it’s pretty straightforward.” They use a band — basically a rubber band, like this, only a little smaller. This one was actually around the playing cards I got yesterday, but it had a certain familiarity to it.

And I said, “Well, what exactly is the process?”

And they said, “The band is applied to the tail, tightly. And then another band is applied to the scrotum, tightly. Blood flow is slowly retarded, a week later the parts in question fall off. ”

“Great! Got it” OK, I call the SPCA to confirm this — they confirm it. I also call PETA, just for fun, and they don’t like it, but they confirm it. OK, that’s basically how you do it.

So the next day I go out. And I’m given a horse and we go get the lambs and we take them to a pen that we built, and we go about the business of animal husbandry.

Melanie is the wife of Albert. Albert is the shepherd in question. Melanie picks up the lamb — two hands — one hand on both legs on the right, likewise on the left. Lamb goes on the post, she opens it up. Alright. Great. Albert goes in, I follow Albert, the crew is around. I always watch the process done the first time before I try it. Being an apprentice, you know, you do that. Albert reaches in his pocket to pull out, you know, this black rubber band but what comes out instead is a knife. And I’m like that’s not rubber at all, you know. And he kind of flicked it open in a way that caught the sun that was just coming over the Rockies, it was very — it was, it was impressive.

In the space of about two seconds, Albert had the knife between the cartilage of the tail, right next to the butt of the lamb, and very quickly the tail was gone and in the bucket that I was holding. A second later with a big thumb and a well calloused forefinger, he had the scrotum, firmly in his grasp, and he pulled it toward him, like so, and he took the knife and he put it on the tip. Now you had think you know what’s coming Michael, you don’t, OK. He snips it, throws the tip over his shoulder, and then grabs the scrotum and pushes it upward, and then his head dips down, obscuring my view, but what I hear is a slurping sound, and a noise that sounds like velcro being yanked off a sticky wall and I am not even kidding.

Can we roll the video? No I’m kidding — we don’t — I thought it best to talk in pictures.

So, I do something now I’ve never ever done on a Dirty Jobs shoot, ever. I say, “Time out. Stop.” You guys know the show, we use take one, we don’t do take two. There’s no writing, there’s no scripting, there’s no nonsense. We don’t fool around, we don’t rehearse, we shoot what we get!

I said, “Stop. This is nuts. I mean, you know — This is crazy. We can’t do this.

And Albert’s like, “What?”

And I’m like, “I don’t know what just happened, but there are testicles in this bucket and that’s not how we do it.”

And he said “Well, that’s how we do it.”

And I said, “Why would you do it this way?” And before I even let him explain, I said, “I want to do it the right way, with the rubber bands.”

And he says, “Like the Humane Society?”

And I said, “Yes, like the Humane Society. Let’s do something that doesn’t make the lamb squeal and bleed — we’re on in five continents, dude. We’re on twice a day on the Discovery Channel — we can’t do this.”

He says, “OK.” He goes to his box and he pulls out a bag of these little rubber bands. Melanie picks up another lamb, puts it on the post, band goes on the tail, band goes on the scrotum. Lamb goes on the ground, lamb takes two steps, falls down, gets up, shakes a little, takes another couple steps, falls down. I’m like, this is not a good sign for this lamb, at all. Gets up, walks to the corner, it’s quivering, and it lies down and it’s in obvious distress.

And I’m looking at the lamb and I say, “Albert, how long? When does he get up?”

He’s like, “A day.”

I said “A day! How long does it take them to fall off?”

“A week.”

Meanwhile, the lamb that he had just did his little procedure on is, you know, he’s just prancing around, bleeding stopped. He’s, you know, nibbling on some grass, frolicking. And I was just so blown away at how wrong I was, in that second. And I was reminded how utterly wrong I am, so much of the time. And I was especially reminded of what an ridiculously short straw I had that day because now I had to do what Albert had just done, and there are like 100 of these lambs in the pen, and suddenly this whole thing’s starting to feel like a German porno, and I’m like …

Melanie picks up the lamb, puts it on the post, opens it up. Albert hands me the knife. I go in, tail comes off. I go in, I grab the scrotum, tip comes off. Albert instructs, “Push it way up there.” I do. “Push it further.” I do.

The testicles emerge, they look like thumbs, coming right at you. And he says, “Bite ’em. Just bite ’em off.” And I heard him, I heard all the words. Like, how did — how did I get here? How did — you know — I mean — how did I get here?

It’s just — it’s one of those moments where the brain goes off on it’s own and suddenly, I’m standing there, in the Rockies, and all I can think of is the Aristotelian definition of a tragedy. You know, Aristotle says a tragedy is that moment when the hero comes face to face with his own identity.

And I’m like, “What is this jacked-up metaphor? I don’t like what I’m thinking right now.” And I can’t get this thought out of my head, and I can’t get that vision out of my sight, so I did what I had to do. I went in and I took them. I took them like this, and I yanked my face back. And I’m standing there with two testicles on my chin. And now I can’t get — I can’t shake the metaphor.

OK, I’m still in poetics, in Aristotle, and I’m thinking — out of nowhere, two terms come crashing into my head that I haven’t heard since my classics professor in college drilled them there. And they are anagnorisis and peripeteia. Anagnorisis and peripeteia. Anagnorisis is the Greek word for discovery. Literally, the transition from ignorance to knowledge is anagnorisis, what our network does, it’s what Dirty Jobs is. And I’m up to my neck in anagnorises every single day. Great. The other word, peripeteia, that’s the moment in the great tragedies, you know — Euripides and Sophocles — the moment where Oedipus has his moment, where he suddenly realizes that hot chick he’s been sleeping with and having babies with is his mother. OK. That’s peripety or peripeteia. And this metaphor in my head — I got anagnorisis and peripetia on my chin.

I got to tell you, it’s such a great device though. When you start to look for peripetia, you find it everywhere. I mean, Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense,” right? Spends the whole movie trying to help the little kid who sees dead people, and then, boom — oh, I’m dead — peripetia. You know? It’s crushing when the audience sees it the right way. Neo in “The Matrix,” you know? Oh, I’m living in a computer program — that’s weird.

These discoveries that lead to sudden realizations. And I’ve been having them, over 200 dirty jobs, I have them all the time, but that one — that one drilled something home in a way that I just wasn’t prepared for. And, as I stood there, looking at the happy lamb that I had just defiled — but it looked OK. Looking at that poor other little thing that I’d done it the right way on, and I just was struck by if I’m wrong about that and if I’m wrong so often, in a literal way, what other peripatetic misconceptions might I be able to comment upon?

Because, look, I’m not a social anthropologist but I have a friend who is. And I talk to him. And he says, “Hey Mike. Look, I don’t know if your brain is interested in this sort of thing or not, but do you realize you’ve shot in every state? You’ve worked in mining, you’ve worked in fishing, you’ve worked in steel, you’ve worked in every major industry. You’ve had your back shoulder to shoulder with these guys that our politicians are desperate to relate to every four years, right?”

I can still see Hillary doing the shots of rye, dribbling down her chin, with the steel workers. I mean, these are the people that I work with every single day. And if you have something to say about their thoughts, collectively, it might be time to think about it. Because, dude, you know, four years. You know, that’s in my head, testicles are on my chin, thoughts are bouncing around. And, after that shoot, Dirty Jobs really didn’t change, in terms of what the show is, but it changed for me, personally.

And now, when I talk about the show, I no longer just tell the story you heard and 190 like it. I do, but I also start to talk about some of the other things I got wrong, some of the other notions of work that I’ve just been assuming are sacrosanct, and they’re not. People with dirty jobs are happier than you think. As a group, they’re the happiest people I know. And I don’t want to start whistling “Look for the Union Label,” and all that happy worker crap. I’m just telling you that these are balanced people who do unthinkable work. Roadkill picker-uppers whistle while they work, I swear to God, I did it with them. They’ve got this amazing sort of symmetry to their life. and I see it over and over and over again.

So I started to wonder what would happen if we challenged some of these sacred cows. Follow your passion — we’ve been talking about it here for the last 36 hours. Follow your passion — what could possibly be wrong with that? Probably the worst advice I ever got. You know, follow your dreams and go broke, right? I mean, that’s all I heard growing up. I didn’t know what to do with my life, but I was told if you follow your passion, it’s going to work out.

I can give you 30 examples, right now — Bob Combs, the pig farmer in Las Vegas who collects the uneaten scraps of food from the casinos and feeds them them to his swine. Why? Because there’s so much protein in the stuff we don’t eat his pigs grow at twice the normal speed, and he is one rich pig farmer, and he is good for the environment, and he spends his days doing this incredible service, and he smells like hell, but God bless him. He’s making a great living. You ask him, “Did you follow your passion here?” and he’d laugh at you. The guy’s worth — he just got offered like 60 million dollars for his farm and turned it down, outside of Vegas. He didn’t follow his passion. He stepped back and he watched where everybody was going and he went the other way. And I hear that story over and over.

Matt Froind, a dairy farmer in New Canaan, Connecticut, who woke up one day and realized the crap from his cows was worth more than their milk, if he could use it to make these biodegradable flower pots. Now, he’s selling them to Walmart. Follow his passion — the guy’s — come on.

So I started to look at passion, I started to look at efficiency versus effectiveness, as Tim talked about earlier, that’s a huge distinction. I started to look at teamwork and determination, and basically all those platitudes they call successories that hang with that schmaltzy art in boardrooms around the world right now. That stuff — it’s suddenly all been turned on its head.

Safety — safety first is me going back to, you know, OSHA and PETA and the Humane Society. What if OSHA got it wrong? I mean, this is heresy, what I’m about to say, but what if it’s really safety third? Right? No, I mean really. What I mean to say is I value my safety on these crazy jobs as much as the people that I’m working with, but the ones who really get it done, they’re not out there talking about safety first. They know that other things come first — the business of doing the work comes first, the business of getting it done.

And I’ll never forget, up in the Bering Sea, I was on a crab boat with the deadliest catch guys, which I also work on in the first season. We’re about 100 miles off the coast of Russia 50 foot seas, big waves, green water coming over the wheelhouse, right? Most hazardous environment I’d ever seen, and I was back with a guy, lashing the pots down. So, I’m 40 feet off the deck, which is like looking down at the top of your shoe, you know, and it’s doing this in the ocean. Unspeakably dangerous.

I scamper down, I go into the wheelhouse and I say, with some level of incredulity, “Captain, OSHA.”

And he says, “OSHA? — ocean.” And he points out there. But in that moment, what he said next can’t be repeated in the lower 48. It can’t be repeated on any factory floor or any construction site. But he looked at me, and he said, “Son — he’s my age, by the way, he calls me son, I love that — he says, “Son, I’m a captain of a crab boat. My responsibility is not to get you home alive. My responsibility is to get you home rich.” You want to get home alive, that’s on you. And for the rest of that day, safety first.

I was like — So, the idea that we create this false — this sense of complacency when all we do is talk about somebody else’s responsibility as though it’s our own, and vice versa. Anyhow, a whole lot of things. I could talk at length about the many little distinctions we made and the endless list of ways that I got it wrong. But, what it all comes down to is this. I formed a theory, and I’m going to share it now in my remaining two minutes and 30 seconds.

It goes like this — we’ve declared war on work, as a society, all of us. It’s a civil war. It’s a cold war, really. We didn’t set out to do it and we didn’t twist our mustache in some Machiavellian way, but we’ve done it. And we’ve waged this war on at least four fronts, certainly in Hollywood. The way we portray working people on TV, it’s laughable. If there’s a plumber, he’s 300 pounds and he’s got a giant buttcrack, admit it. You see him all the time. That’s what plumbers look like, right? We turn them into heroes, or we turn them into punchlines. That’s what TV does. We try hard on Dirty Jobs not to do that, which is why I do the work and I don’t cheat.

But, we’ve waged this war on Madison Avenue. I mean, so many of the commercials that come out there — in the way of a message, what’s really being said? Your life would be better if you could work a little less, if you didn’t have to work so hard, if you could get home a little earlier, if you could retire a little faster, if you could punch out a little sooner, it’s all in there, over and over, again and again.

Washington — I can’t even begin to talk about the deals and policies in place that affect the bottom line reality of the available jobs because I don’t really know. I just know that that’s a front in this war.

And right here guys, Silicon Valley I mean, how many people have an iPhone on them right now? How many people have their Blackberries? We’re plugged in, we’re connected. I would never suggest for a second that something bad has come out of the tech revolution. Good grief, not to this crowd. But I would suggest that innovation without imitation is a complete waste of time. And nobody celebrates imitation the way Dirty Jobs guys know it has to be done. Your iPhone without those people making the same interface, the same circuitry, the same board, over and over. All that — that’s what makes it equally as possible as the genius that goes inside of it.

So, we’ve got this new toolbox, you know. Our tools today don’t look like shovels and picks. They look like the stuff we walk around with. And so the collective effect of all of that has been this marginalization of lots and lots of jobs. And I realized, probably too late in this game — I hope not, because I don’t know if I can do 200 more of these things, but we’re going to do as many as we can. And to me the most important thing to know and to really come face to face with, is that fact that I got it wrong about a lot of things, not just the testicles on my chin. I got a lot wrong.

So, we’re thinking — by we, I mean me — that the thing to do is to talk about a PR campaign for work, manual labor, skilled labor. Somebody needs to be out there talking about the forgotten benfits I’m talking about grandfather stuff. The stuff a lot us probably grew up with but we’ve kind of — you know, kind of lost a little.

Barack wants to create two and a half million jobs. The infrastructure is a huge deal. This war on work, that I suppose exists, has casualties like any other war. The infrastructure’s the first one Declining trade school enrollments are the second one. Every single year, fewer electricians, fewer carpenters, fewer plumbers, fewer welders, fewer pipefitters, fewer steamfitters. The infrastructure jobs that everybody is talking about creating are those guys. The ones that have been in decline, over and over. In the meanwhile, we got two trillion dollars, at a minimum, according to the American Society of Civil Engineers, that we need to expend to even make a dent in the infrastructure which is currently rated at a D minus.

So, if I were running for anything, and I’m not, I would simply say that the jobs we hope to make and the jobs we hope to create aren’t going to stick unless they’re jobs that people want. And I know the point of this conference is to celebrate things that are near and dear to us, but I also know that clean and dirty aren’t opposites. They’re two sides of the same coin, just like innovation and imitation, like risk and responsibility, like peripetia and anagnorisis, like that poor little lamb, who I hope isn’t quivering anymore, and like my time that’s gone.

It’s been great talking to you and get back to work, will you?