Metaphors!

Your blogger apologizes for the slow pace this morning. Her computer is virus-ridden, and she's covering an event at the Partnership for Public Service, which produced this gem from Partnership VP for Policy, John Palguta, who, it must be said, was paraphrasing Ron Sanders of the Directorate of National Intelligence:

"Federal employees are a cheap date. You show a little appreciation and a little sense of regard and I’ll follow you anywhere."

I think this says a lot more about how federal employees have been managed than federal employees themselves. But I also think it says something about how federal employees are perceived as a group rather than as collection, as a sort of reverse Picture of Dorian Gray. The picture changes--sometimes politicians cast the federal workforce as a bad thing, sometimes federal workers are seen as noble. But the simple existence of that larger picture obscures the truth: that the federal workforce is incredibly varied and complex, and that federal workers require an equally subtle and specified approach.