"Government workers often get a bad rap, but it's rare for them to receive much appreciation when government works"
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Lesko’s line is a tidy little reversal: the public loves to treat “government” as a faceless machine until that machine quietly prevents a disaster, clears a road, processes a benefit, or keeps a plane from colliding midair. The intent isn’t to canonize bureaucracy; it’s to puncture a cultural habit of selective attention. We notice the DMV line, not the inspected bridge that doesn’t collapse. We remember the pandemic website crash, not the county nurse who got vaccines into arms.
As an entertainer, Lesko is doing what good populist performers do: translating a civic truth into a crowd-ready paradox. “Bad rap” carries the tabloid flavor of talk radio and comment sections, while “when government works” lands like a punchline with an implied shrug: of course you don’t clap for the lights staying on. The subtext is that anti-government rhetoric has become a low-cost identity signal, one that flatters the speaker as savvy and skeptical while erasing the people behind the system. “Government workers” are framed as ordinary laborers, not “elites,” which slyly challenges the default villain casting.
The context is a long, bipartisan drift toward treating the state as either savior in crisis or scapegoat in inconvenience. Lesko’s point slots neatly into an era of infrastructure failures, public health whiplash, and algorithm-fed outrage: competence is boring, and boredom doesn’t trend. The line asks for a different kind of civic realism - not faith, not cynicism, but recognition that the most functional parts of modern life are often the least visible and least thanked.
As an entertainer, Lesko is doing what good populist performers do: translating a civic truth into a crowd-ready paradox. “Bad rap” carries the tabloid flavor of talk radio and comment sections, while “when government works” lands like a punchline with an implied shrug: of course you don’t clap for the lights staying on. The subtext is that anti-government rhetoric has become a low-cost identity signal, one that flatters the speaker as savvy and skeptical while erasing the people behind the system. “Government workers” are framed as ordinary laborers, not “elites,” which slyly challenges the default villain casting.
The context is a long, bipartisan drift toward treating the state as either savior in crisis or scapegoat in inconvenience. Lesko’s point slots neatly into an era of infrastructure failures, public health whiplash, and algorithm-fed outrage: competence is boring, and boredom doesn’t trend. The line asks for a different kind of civic realism - not faith, not cynicism, but recognition that the most functional parts of modern life are often the least visible and least thanked.
Quote Details
| Topic | Work |
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