Mary Poppins quits

The pay was just supercalifragilisticexpiali-bullshit…

In this great Funny or Die sketch, my imaginary best friend Veronica Mars Kristen Bell plays a fed-up Mary Poppins, who is tired of making the federal minimum wage of $7.25/hour. “The pay’s too low/I can’t live on this dough!” she sings. “Just a three dollar increase can make a living wage!”

Millions of Americans could also use a raise. About two-thirds of minimum wage workers are women, many of them child care providers and other domestic workers like Poppins — though unlike Poppins, they are disproportionately women of color. As we well know–and the video does a great job of summarizing–a minimum wage puts you below the poverty line, often forced to take on a second or even third shift to make ends meet, and without enough to afford rent in any state in the country.

Calling out the “CEOs in fancy suites” who “just collect,” as well as taking a jab at Republicans and the Tea Party, Bell’s modern day Poppins offers a hilariously prim and proper call for a little bit of class antagonism that’s sorely needed in these absurd times when CEOs make nearly 300 times as much as their employees. It’s worth noting, in fact, that a three dollar increase to the federal minimum wage would likely not even make a living wage in every state. The $15/hour that fast food workers have been demanding sounds more like it.

Maya Dusenbery is an Executive Director of Feministing.