a man should use a word like "essential" carefully

1. So Jake, if you think that their task is too essential to allow them to strike, why do you want to pay them like shit and destroy their benefits? 

2. Seriously: what in the holy name of fuck has Jacob Weisberg ever contributed to the human species, beyond occasional sensual shoulder rubs for Mickey Kaus and cleaning up enough of Matt Yglesias's relentless misspellings that his conjectural musings can be appreciated by the world's imbeciles? And I guaran-goddamn-tee you that Jacob Weisberg makes way, way more than your average Chicago teacher. So what are the priorities here? People like Weisberg always talk a big game about how teaching is important, but they don't want teachers to make a significant fraction of what they make, even though their jobs are, well, meaningless bullshit.

Is your job essential, Jake?  Does the world really need articles like "A Better Way to Prepare a Mint Julep" and "Why It's Feminist to Call Your Mom a Cunt" and "Maybe Mitt Romney is Actually the Blacker Candidate" and shitty TV recaps by twee undersexed Wire-quoting pencil-dicked mawkish "post-political" Harvard-philosophy-major careerist grinders whose sole concerns are playing grabass with underage interns and worrying about whether anybody important will tweet their shitty piece comparing Sons of Anarchy to late period Walter Benjamin? Would we all suffer without those things? I mean Jesus, I think Troy Patterson can come up with yet another article proclaiming what an advanced sophisticate he is without the late night Gchat mutual fellatio sessions. We will find a way to survive without another article about how black is actually white and how the Monkees were secretly better than the Beatles and how it's actually pleasurable to pour scalding hot coffee on your balls and also too innovative innovators innovating innovatively. Your painfully unfunny sports podcasts and senior semiotics seminar paper-like hamhanded movie reviews would probably limp their wretched ways onto the Internet without you. 

I'm saying: we make choices, all the time, about the kind of society we really want, about what we're willing to actually pay for.