The copy editor in me knows it should be “whom” in the title, but that would not be an accurate quote of Joe Strummer.

The sentiment is the important thing. You do need to watch out for where your money is coming from, what you are asked to do for it.

I used to tease undergrads who would say they were in PR and marketing, because so often they had no answer for this simple question: What do you want to sell? Oh, anything they would say, in good job-hunter fashion. OK, I would say. Let me hear your pitch for napalm. The clever ones would blink and then smile, and at least grasp the point. More than a few, however, just kept blinking. I can’t recall a single persuasive pitch.

A couple of times in my life I have been stopped short by the work I was asked to do. I have tried to learn from those moments.

Once I was writing a case study about a techno business down South, based on materials in which the company proudly proclaimed that its many employees were non-union. It wasn’t a question of my leaving out that tidbit. It was the thinking behind it that bothered me, and I could not embrace it in any way.

I think most people shrug and just do the work in those cases. The impression I gather from the media is that recession or no, there are still lots of people out there who work, but who feel their “real lives” revolve around their TVs and their kitchen appliances, and all that politics stuff is for others to decide.

Once while working for a newspaper, I was gathering info in a clerk-of-courts office in a small town and heard one of the clerks describe her recent cruise. They had made port in Haiti, which at the time was in the midst of a massive and bloody politcial showdown. “Haiti….” the clerk’s friend mulled. “They got some trouble there, don’t they?” Her friend said she had heard that too, but they hadn’t seen any of it from the ship. I almost laughed out loud.

There is a commercial running now for a dish TV service featuring a spotless white couple whose home includes steel appliances, lots of big TVs, knick-knacks artfully arranged on otherwise useless little shelves, and of course two kids, who sit silently with little smiles before the cartoons running on the biggest set in the house. Nearby the parents are tracking their expenses on the PC, wondering why the paycheck is always gone before it arrives. I can never resist shouting at the screen, “Because you keep buying sh*t you don’t need?”

Theirs is a different message. For only 40 bucks a months, they announce, you can get dish service that costs more from other vendors. Then 100 channels of media will be plumbed into your house 24/7.

When I am in a home or motel room with such TV choices I so often wind up watching monster truck races or something like them, just because it’s on. I admit it. But I have never understood why any sane human would pay for a TV signal. I buy some episodes from iTunes, and borrow DVDs from my library but even with library fines, no way am I spending anything close to $40 a month. Christ, that’s $500 a year.

There’s also a newer ad featuring a different couple, though their good friends from the first ad show up to reinforce the sell. The woman in the new couple tells us that she used to think the tough economy meant … wait for it…wait for it… “DOING WITHOUT.” Oh, the humanity! You’d think she was considering whether to heat the house next winter.

I can never figure out: Are these horrible people meant to look like the target audience for this service, or are they meant to represent the ideal for which the target audience is expected to strive?

I’m not sure which version is scarier.

I think of myself as differenfrom this stereotype of the middle class. I think I’ve seen too much, and maybe I care more.

I don’t just want a job that will secure me enough money to buy a big TV and the right programming, and sufficient free time to zone out in front of them.

I want a mission.