Kick A Poor With ‘Forbes On Fox’!

This is odd: in a four-minute segment on our hero baker lady who simply does not care to sell her sticky treats to those gross food stamp families, fully two separate people bring up the Civil Rights Act and how shop owners may not discriminate against entire classes of people! Huh. Weird. But never fear, others step into the breach to remind us that shop owners have a right of association (as, of course, does the farmer's market that wanted the baker lady to participate in their EBT-accepting token system in the first place), and that sometimes people on welfare buy cigarettes and tattoos, and that states are looking into that ... somehow. (Obviously, Poors are not buying tattoos or cigarettes with their food stamps, but somehow the state will ensure that they never use Money to purchase legal products that the state finds gauche.) Anyway, the whole thing ends as it should, with some man person intoning, "What a shame that we've erased 'shame' from society. Why can't we make someone embarrassed for living off others?"

Why can't we indeed! When your Editrix's older sister was home raising two small twinlets, say around 2008-2009, said sister's husband was laid off from his job selling construction equipment. Luckily, they got an absolutely princely amount (seriously, it was a very nice amount) of EBT (food stamp) benefits each month, in addition to cheese, milk and eggs from the Women Infants and Children dairy-supplements program. If you wanted an omelette, you went to our sister's! (But don't worry, they are white.) And every time our sister went to the store and swiped her EBT card, the cashiers would snort and sigh and frown and grumble and really carry on. Did our sister feel the shame those cashiers intended? Yes she did, so thanks, ladies! But that shame was not going to open up any construction-equipment-selling jobs any faster. (The only cashiers who were unfailingly pleasant were those at Trader Joe's, as they were too busy earning a living wage and listening to awesome music all day while they worked to be cunty to poor people.)

Are poor people gross sometimes? Sure! Do they sometimes make bad decisions? Certainly! Do we all make bad decisions, except some of us have a buffer that will keep things from devolving too quickly? We do! Look at Donald Trump, for example. He once claimed to be poorer than the poorest homeless person on the street, because of how he owed $8 bazillion in one of his many (many) bankruptcies. We found that statement to be ... inelegant, as his extreme poverty wasn't stopping him from sleeping in a princess bed and dining off golden plate.

But sure, let us all shame people on food stamps; they can just go out and get one of the jobs the GOP keeps blaming Obama for the nonexistence of.

Anyway, here's the awesome kicker to our tale: our sister's husband -- who is a wonderful brother-in-law, and loves our sister very much -- is a Fox-watchin' Romney man through and through, and thinks we should cut welfare, because of course he does.

[ MediaMatters ]