Poor Maria Shriver, the long suffering wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger, is out promoting an idea that just shows it wasn’t all that surprising that she married a Republican. According to a press release two months ago, Marriott International Joins The Envelope Please™, A New Initiative Created by Maria Shriver and A Woman’s Nation™ in Support of Hotel Room Attendants. But before getting to what sounds like a worthy campaign, let’s just take a moment to chuckle at all those trademarks. America really needs more trademarks. Like that first sentence would have been some much better like this: Poor Maria Shriver™, the long suffering™ wife™ of Arnold Schwarze™negger™, is out promoting an idea™ that just shows™ it wasn’t all that surprising™ that she married™ a Republican™.

Anyway, the idea here is to put little tip envelopes out in hotel rooms as a way to encourage people to tip the housekeeping staff. All my life, I have been a strong supporting of tipping the housekeeping staff. They do a difficult and disgusting job and generally get paid poorly. I do it because it is one small thing that I can do to help. It takes away a small amount of the oppression that the housekeepers suffer under. But this corporate push to encourage tipping is repugnant in the extreme.

Forget about “A Woman’s Nation”; it is just some group that Shriver put together back in 2011. It seems to be nothing more than a group that doubtless does a little good, but which is primarily involved in allowing companies like Goldman Sachs and Cisco Systems to look like they have the slightest interest in helping poor women. And this new venture, The™ Envelope™ Please™™™, is just a way of making Marriott look like a compassionate corporation.

At Think Progress a week and a half ago, Bryce Covert noted that nationwide, the median pay for hotel maids is $9.41 per hour. But at “compassionate” Marriott, it is even lower: roughly $8.32 per hour. So sure, maids are way underpaid for their difficult jobs. But as Covert noted, “Tips will of course help, but a pay raise would lift their living standards even more.” She added:

But the ever brilliant Michael Hiltzik suggested that there might be a much more nefarious aspect to this. Currently, hotel housekeeping is not considered a “tipped occupation” by the federal government. This means that companies must pay at least the minimum wage. But if this campaign is successful, it could be reclassified. And if it becomes a tipped occupation, then Marriott could pay their housekeepers even less than minimum wage!

Tipping is always a scam. I still always tip, because it isn’t a scam being perpetrated by the poor employees. It is a scam by corporations to keep their direct labor costs low. This allows them to post prices that are lower than they really are and skim ever more profits. We should really outlaw the practice at the same time we raise the minimum wage to $15 and peg it to productivity growth (not inflation). I’m not hopeful for anything like this. But the least we can do is push back against this kind of thing. When I go into Denny’s, at least I don’t have to look at signs that say, “Because we are so great to work for, we are encouraging you to tip your server (because we pay them less than minimum wage)!”

Media Matters brought my attention to, The Media’s Imaginary Coffee Salute Scandal. It seems that Obama had a cup of coffee in his hand when he saluted Marines while exited Marine One. The right wing are freaking out, even though Bush the Younger did the same thing all the time while holding his dog. It is just another thing for partisans to freak out about. And I don’t especially care.

What I have cared about in the past is the habit of our men in uniform saluting the President of the United States. This goes back basically to the beginning. To me it has always smacked of military dictatorships. But it is what we have always done and it does go along with Marines code (pdf) that states that one should salute “all officers senior to you in rank.” The president certainly is entitled as Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces (and not simply Commander-in-Chief). But the Marines mention a number of other civilians who should be saluted, such as governors. Thus this is a sign of subordination of the military to the civilian government — a very good thing indeed. Conservatives want to turn this around.

But the Marines are a practical group and they note conditions under which one should not salute. For example, if you are bent over an engine trying to fix it, you are not expected to salute. But most important in this situation, you don’t need to salute when, “Carrying articles with both hands or being otherwise so occupied as to make saluting impractical.” That would pretty much relieve a president from ever having to salute.

Of course, the president never did salute. You know Colonel Jackson, General Grant, Colonel Roosevelt, General Eisenhower? None of them ever saluted. The tradition started in 1981 when the star of Bedtime for Bonzo did it because he thought it was super keen. He had been in World War II, but only stateside working in public relations. But you know how it is: once they stuck “under God” into the “Pledge of Allegiance,” people assumed it had always been there. Allen West, who really should know better even though he is a total authoritarian nut job, called the “latte salute” disgraceful. But you gotta wonder where West and all the Fox News ranters were when this happened:

Of course they were no where. No one cared. And no one cares about the “latte salute.” Brian Adam Jones sums up the issue well:

The man can’t win. No Democratic president can win. This is because the right wing in this country has nothing to talk about in terms of policy. The world view of the right is that the nation is divided into the patriots and the traitors. And the Democrats are by definition traitors. It doesn’t matter if any given Democrat is a president or not. Thinking this way doesn’t make those on the right traitors, but it definitely destroys any claim to being patriots.