Who Cares About the Poor?
One of the biggest political non-stories this week was of course Mitt Romney saying he’s not concerned about the very poor. I call it a “non-story” because in spite of the attention garnered by his choice of words, he didn’t really say anything new this week, as most political hopefuls try to avoid doing most weeks. It’s easy to take this kind of clumsy phraseology out of context and make jokes at his expense, as no end of commentators have been doing while they wait for a typo in a local headline to come along and steal their attention like a bird with a piece of shiny wrapping paper. After all, whenever a rich white guy says he doesn’t care about the poor, it’s easy to conjure images of Uncle Pennybags lighting his cigar with an unpaid mortgage, or cleaning his monocle so he can more clearly make out a black girl’s tears when when her mother’s food stamps are rejected at the candy counter. Really, the material just writes itself.
But more interesting than the hyperbole is the actual substance of what he was trying to say. The intended point was that the suffering of the poor shouldn’t be the focus of our attention right now because there are adequate safety nets to keep them from sinking any lower. Welfare, Medicaid, food stamps, subsidized housing, all these things are in place and ready to keep the basic needs of our poorest citizens met. According to the American ethos, it’s their own responsibility to raise themselves from the ghetto by their bootstraps. But as a good Christian nation, we can at least make sure they can afford to put some Fancy Feast on the table while they’re there.
So instead of worrying about the comfortably impoverished, Mitt Romney thinks we should invest ourselves in the plight of those who actually have something to lose and no one to help them avoid getting caught like shrimp in the government’s trawling safety net, the middle class. In the most generous sense, it’s like saying we shouldn’t worry about the guy with cancer because he’s already in the hospital getting the treatment he needs, and should instead worry about the kids who are about to start smoking. In a more realistic sense, he’s effectively saying that being poor is only a problem if you’re not used to it. It’s not about what street corner you sleep on, it’s about the journey that took you there, and there’s no shame in having to sell your blood for a sandwich as long as you weren’t selling cars last week. What we need as a nation is a new safety net with bigger holes to keep the fat and happy middle class from falling into the second safety net, which is good enough for everybody else.
So the next time I see someone with a tin cup and no legs dragging himself along the floor of my subway car with his knuckles, I’ll tell him proudly that there’s no need for me to give him any change, as my tax dollars have already paid for his well-being, and a “thank you” would be nice. And if on my way to work I see a man in a tinfoil space helmet shitting on the sidewalk, I’ll pause to ask if he’s ever had a job with dental insurance. If my inquiries are met with incoherent mumblings instead of a long, sad story about his precipitous fall from middle management, I’ll just move on and stand somewhere that smells a bit nicer, secure in the knowledge that our government has seen to his plight already, or will at least clean it up off the sidewalk in a few hours.
-TC