You probably missed it, because it created barely a ripple in the media, but last Friday, a federal judge appointed by Donald Trump struck down one of President Biden’s most pro-worker policies: his effort to ensure that far more Americans benefit from overtime pay. Around 4 million salaried workers with lower incomes are the losers in this decision, yet it generated startlingly few news stories and no outraged missives from leading columnists.
Watching this all unfold brings to mind a now-forgotten controversy. Remember when Oliver Anthony, the little-known folk singer, went viral in 2023 with his song lamenting the plight of working people imposed by the “Rich Men North of Richmond”? Donald Trump and Republicans claimed the bearded, red-haired Southerner as one of their own, a veritable bard of MAGA country who’d crafted the ultimate right-wing populist ballad of protest aimed directly at supercilious elites.
“This is the anthem of the forgotten Americans,” gushed Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene. Media commentary endlessly analyzed the song as a cry of anguish straight from the blue-collar heartland, one that elite liberals should take to heart as a sign of how badly they’d failed regular Americans.
Here’s another “forgotten” detail about Anthony’s song for you to contemplate: It was about overtime pay.
“I’ve been sellin’ my soul, workin’ all day, overtime hours for bullshit pay,” Anthony croons, adding that this has led him to “drown my troubles away.” He laments that “young men are puttin’ themselves six feet in the ground,” seemingly describing oft-diagnosed social crises like self-medication, the spiritual alienation of modern work, and “deaths of despair.” All this was apparently a reference to Anthony’s own stint in a North Carolina factory, and he blames it all on the “Rich Men North of Richmond”—politicians and their corporate overlords rigging the system........