When I see this newspaper’s publisher and editor come to work in their limos, fresh from saying goodbye to their butlers, after taking a bracing morning walk down the tree-lined boulevards of their snobby suburbs, I’m not bitter.

Envious. But not bitter.

That’s what makes America great. I know that if I work really hard and spell all my words right and turn in every column on time and write compelling stuff about bankers and tradesmen, that I, too, will eventually be able to look down on the little people and laugh at them.

Of course, it’s not only something as vague as the “American Dream” that keeps hope alive. Litigation has a lot to do with it. That’s also an important part of the American tradition. Sue the bastards. That works, too.

For instance, imagine that you’re a columnist for an ancient paper that reports on bankers and tradesmen and commercial real estate and stuff. You bare your soul to provide evocative, emotional columns. You strip the excuses from defensive politicians for why things are the way they are. You work your butt off to get to the naked truth.

And you know that you will be rewarded for all this, not because there is a God in heaven, not because the publisher is a great guy, but because the Massachusetts legal environment is sympathetic to those of us who strip naked the pretense of financial services.

Company Assets

In Chelsea, in Salisbury, and soon to come to a town near you, strip clubs are being sued by dancers who want what every self respecting stripper deserves: salary, benefits, overtime, sick leave, tip money, free drinks, a turkey at Thanksgiving, and, of course, time off for bad behavior.

I know how you feel, girls. I, too, am an “independent contractor,” with nothing guaranteed to me, beyond the tip money I get from readers. You’ve seen the photo that accompanies my column. I show a little flesh; I do my best to pretty up a paper best known for photos of warehouses about to be auctioned.

Those of you who sit behind desks, and have offices and potted plants, look down on strippers and columnists. But, as Robert Louis Stevenson put it, “everyone lives by selling something.” The girls and I do our best; we are assets to our organizations and we deserve better than this “independent contractor” stuff.

If there is one troubling aspect to the stripper litigation, it may be that bosses, after reviewing the evidence, might get new ideas about how to keep the workin’ man down. Several of the Massachusetts dancers have apparently complained that not only don’t they get wages and overtime, but that they actually get charged for the privilege of dancing at the clubs. Even most newspaper publishers haven’t thought of that one.

Oh, sure, I get charged an “ink fee” when I come to the office with my quill pen and write columns. But, I’m free to dance in the corridors, without being charged for it.

Theory Lacks Legs

Economists, who rarely earn overtime because the marginal value of their input drops to zero about 15 seconds after they start talking, aren’t terribly sympathetic to the plight of strippers and columnists. Stephen Trejo, an economist at the University of Texas, has expressed misgivings about folks such as computer programmers and stockbrokers and strippers and newspaper columnists getting overtime-pay protection, because they are relatively free, if they aren’t happy, to wander the Earth looking for a better boss.

The federal and state regulations on overtime and who is a “professional” and who is eligible for overtime and how “independent” an independent contractor has to be are a murky mess. Under the federal rules, I may well be a “creative professional,” and thus, exempt from overtime requirements. You see the complexities. The strippers are creative, but they’re not, somehow, professional.

The federal Fair Labor and Standards Act didn’t even define “overtime” until 1938.

But basic human rights don’t need a definition. Let the class action lawsuits filed by Massachusetts strippers vacuum up all who are abused, so that, in good time, Cohen and the girls can experience the American Dream. Justice demands it – and that’s the naked truth.