The “Protestant Work Ethic” is a cruel joke. Conservatives I know seldom pass up a chance to disparage the work that other people do. Store clerks, hotel maids, and anyone else they classify as “menial” are fair game for any kind of abuse they can get away with: The work is too easy, they are stupid and lazy, lucky to have a job at all; if they were any kind of human being they would have a better job; just anything that helps the status seekers deny that their own achievements are really the result of chance and privilege. It is one reason I despise the status-seeker component of the middle class and I am not shy about letting them know it. It’s what happens when that poor trailer park kid at the McDonald’s window grows up and makes 20 million dollars. It is also a big part of the explanation for the much disparaged liberalism of wealthy entertainers. A lot of them waited tables or pulled orders or flipped burgers when they were young, and saw first hand what conservative America REALLY thinks of honest work.