http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EO_BnsrWMnISAVANNAH, GA (AP) - University of Kansas graduate Paul Hunt says that even 20 years later, he still doesn't understand what went wrong. Whatever it was, he's out of work--like nearly ten percent of Americans and climbing--and can't make sense of the job market.
"It still blows my mind that a degree in Gender Transitional Studies from the Kansas commuter college isn't enough to guarantee you a job in corporate America," said Hunt, referring to his alma mater.
Hunt, a Moore, Okahoma, native, had attended the school for six years before landing a job at a shipping yard in Boston--with a detour along the way.
"I thought I had it made," recalls Hunt. "I left that hellhole in Oklahoma for what I thought was going to be this great place. [The University of Kansas] was billed as some little wonderland in the midwest where all people were equal... All I remember was racism and homophobia. And bigotry. Also basically no respect for women."
To escape the icy, disapproving stares of Lawrence, Hunt struck a trail for Colorado Springs, where he'd heard people were more tolerant of alternative lifestyles. The recent graduate said of the city, "[It] had a lot of military dudes and Jesus freaks, but I actually got assaulted physically and sexually far less there than I did in Lawrence."
It was in Colorado Springs that he met Tairey Greene, an actor who introduced him to various coaches from the U.S. Olympic Training Center gymnastics program. Hunt failed to qualify for any official Olympic competitor status, but did manage to impress various male members of the Olympic team who would each later fund--from personal accounts--Hunt's foray into what he calls "interpretive gymno-comedy."
"The [Olympic] coaches and I had one more tryout together and I got the job," said Hunt. "I would have never believed that once the gig was over, I would lose my celebrity and now can't even keep a job at a shipping place."
The East Bay yard where Hunt previously worked said they were never sure why Hunt had applied for the job, given that he didn't seem to enjoy work in the slightest.
"He had become a distraction, to be quite honest with you," said Dean O'Carolan, who manages the dock operations at E&M Transport. "Pretty much from the first day he showed up, he constantly complained about how the job wasn't good enough for him."
O'Carolan also made a point of mentioning that when they hired Hunt in 1989, the company didn't anticipate keeping him on their payroll for nearly two decades.
"The union fracked us," deadpanned O'Carolan. "We had no damn idea that there were laws against firing people for some reasons... He didn't enjoy coming to work until he started his little backroom operation with the guys from maintenance. That's when we decided he needed to be let go. No, we never cared about his degree."
Hunt still seems shocked that someone with his educational background can't get settled into a career, despite being removed from the men's locker room at the Olympic Training Center on four occasions and a homosexual peep show in the oil shed at E&M Transport. He denies both accusations.
"We had one of the best all-male home gymnastics clubs around," Hunt laments, referring to his days at the University of Kansas, "and even though I had an extracurricular involvement in the arts and a degree from that place--and don't forget I was famous--nobody wants to hire me."
Since losing his job at the shipping yard and being "totally blocked by the Olympic people, to the point that they haven't returned a phone call in months," Hunt has moved to Savannah, Ga., "to kind of find myself, and enjoy my life in a place where people don't hate."
The blame for the bad economy and job market, according to Hunt, falls mostly on President Bush and Condoleezza Rice. Bush, he says, was only focused on "[the] genocide of people who didn't believe in him," and that Rice "was a carbon copy of Cheney." Both, he says, are responsible for the crumbling job market and education system.
"Those fat cat white power brokers are just killing everybody in the world. The U.S. is fighting wars in like seventeen countries right now and nobody even cares. Plus there's racism at the flagship college of Douglas County, Kansas, and we are expected to believe this is how society works? I basically can't get hired anywhere that men work because of my degree, I think."
