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Now the Los Angeles Times' Andrew Malcolm is mocking the unemployed

March 20, 2009 11:23 am ET by Eric Boehlert

You'll remember it was Malcolm, Laura Bush's former flack, who belittled a homeless man who took a picture of Michelle Obama as she volunteered at a Washington, D.C., homeless shelter. (How could a poor person possibly afford to a cell phone, Malcolm demanded.)

Now, Malcolm, a non-stop embarrassment for the Times, ridicules an unemployed man who addressed Obama at a town hall meeting in California yesterday. His name is Daniel Webber and he told Obama how he was laid off by Toyota and couldn't find work.

Just as he looked down his nose at the D.C. homeless man, Malcolm harrumphs:

Get your facts straight before you stand up...It turns out the burly, 45-year-old Norwalk resident wasn't exactly laid off. He and Toyota agreed today that he took a voluntary buyout. His choice. He's still looking, if you're hiring. But how he got where he is turns out to be a little different than he first described on national TV.

Hmm, Webber took a buyout, so he wasn't really laid off. At least according to Malcolm. This is just priceless, especially coming from somebody who works at a newspaper, since newspapers across the country have let go thousands of employees in recent years via buyouts.

Meaning, management says it has to get rid of X number of employees, but if people volunteer to leave the company they'll be better compensated. But either way, the company is going to cut the payroll, so it's better to leave on your own accord.

Bottom line, of course, is once people leave, they're out of a job. Webber took a buyout, for whatever reason, and now he can't find work. Just like an awful lot of former journalists who took buyouts and who cannot find work.

Honestly, isn't there some way Laura Bush can hire Malcolm back?

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    • Author by gary6897 (March 20, 2009 11:58 am ET)
         
      Sorry, but Laura also took a buyout.
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    • Author by mattcable250650 (March 20, 2009 12:08 pm ET)
         
      That's like Laura Ingraham saying Meghan McCain was "plus-sized" but that Ingraham didn't call her fat. In a very, VERY highly technical sense, I guess maybe, possibly she didn't. I think we can place "bought-out but not fired" in the same distinction-without-a-difference category.
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    • Author by tcall20043320 (March 20, 2009 12:28 pm ET)
         
      Can we do a Grover Norquist on A**hole Andy -- drown HIM in a bathtub?
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    • Author by Whispers (March 20, 2009 2:33 pm ET)
         

      Wow.

       An employee who takes a buyout is doing so because he knows that if he doesn't, he might get fired and get no buyout anyway.  

       Malcolm is supposed to be a reporter?

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    • Author by secularhuman (March 21, 2009 1:31 am ET)
         
      A voluntary buyout -- as any reality-based newspaper employee today knows -- is nothing more than a layoff with a cushion built-in. It's a small management courtesy to offer them and everyone knows the explicit message in offering them is that you're going to get canned anyway so why not take a few extra weeks' pay. Malcolm clearly doesn't understand the economics of his own business, let alone the nation's. What a fool.
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