[Andrew Schreiber]

One of the things that has always struck me about Dean is he seems to bite the hand that feeds him. On one hand he grovels and begs for support the other he makes snide remarks about them. Take for example politicians, he grovels and begs for support but in the same breath he bad mouths politics and says they aren't the solution. Now he is making remarks about the group of people he wants all of us to be like; hard working people. Shouldn't he be holding them up as an example? They are breaking their backs so that his vision can be realized. How are they any different than the field reset people? Are we going to be disparaging them next?

On the other hand Dean is right. Not to insult manual laborers in any way but for a person who is able to do more manual labor is a waste. If for the formative years of his life Andy Baker was told, "Manual labor is all you can do" we might all be spending a lot more time building gearboxes. Imagine what we would have lost just because we didn't encourage those who can do to do.

In short, I don't know what to tell you. I can see both sides of this comment. Isn't the goal of FIRST to have people look up to engineers and scientists as role models? How can we do that without saying that these professions are somehow better than others. You cannot put someone on a pedestal as a role model without first saying that they are better than others, by saying that you are saying that others are somehow inferior.