Let's Make Poverty Less Enticing

The other day a shocking picture emerged when Michelle Obama went to a soup kitchen in Washington, DC. It wasn't a picture of her bulging biceps, which were mercifully covered, so David Brooks can rest easy and not have to worry about any more nightmares where the First Lady challenges him to arm wrestle. What was shocking was a photo of one of the homeless men she was serving taking a picture of her with his cellphone. Conservatives were outraged. At a time when Wall Street executives are being forced to give up their private planes, limousines, bathroom renovations and multimillion dollar bonuses, the idea that a homeless man has been allowed to hold on to his cellphone while others are making sacrifices is more than we can take.

"If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?" wrote the Los Angeles Times' Andrew Malcolm. "And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?" Kathryn Jean Lopez pointed out that contrary to what many people think, the poor are actually very rich, which explains a lot. Michelle Malkin castigated the homeless man for "ruining what was supposed to be a sob story photo op of the compassionate Mrs. O catering to the downtrodden" and speculated that his phone bills are probably sent to Acorn.

Although some people pointed out that he may have recently come upon bad times and that he may need a cellphone, which could be of the cheap, prepaid variety, so that prospective employers can call him back, or that he may have been a worker at the shelter and not homeless at all, this is all just speculation. Kathy Shaidle, whose blog is aptly named Five Feet of Fury, has a more likely explanation, which she was able to extrapolate from this photo with a perspicacity that would have made the late traitor and On Photography author Susan Sontag proud. "Today's 'poor' are the rich Jesus warned you about: fat, slovenly, wasteful of their money and other people's," she wrote. "He spends all his (our) money on cellphones and, most likely, tattoos and drugs and booze and other crap, and has no money left for a home and food. And why should he bother? We pay for his shelter and food anyhow."

This is not the first time Ms. Shaidle, has taken on the menace of the poor. "The so-called poor have cars and cable tv and free medical," she wrote last year. "They live in America in the 21st century, where school is free and libraries are free and a bus ticket to a better town costs less than a bag of crack. If they're 'poor' it's because they were too lazy and stupid to a) finish high school and/or b) keep their pants on. Jesus had something to say about folks who didn't properly manage their money or other people's." Although I am not familiar with Jesus' admonitions against poor accounting practices, she has a point. Instead of waging class war against the wealthy who worked hard for their money, we should be attacking the poor. After a lot of unsuspecting investors were lured by the poor into putting their hard-earned money into credit defaults swaps and tricked into giving deadbeats subprime mortgages, which ruined our entire economy, haven't poor people done enough harm to this country?

I can't tell you how angry it makes me to think about extremely rude poor people all across this country talking very loudly on their cellphones in soup kitchens and unemployment offices, whining about all their financial problems so everyone can hear. I'm glad someone is finally speaking out about it. And while these poor people were rudely broadcasting their tales of woe to everyone within earshot, guess what they were eating? Mushroom risotto and Broccoli! Isn't gruel good enough for poor people anymore? Those poor people are eating better than I am. Is it really fair that I should have to eat the Pork Brains in Milk Gravy Mrs. Swift served up the other night to cut down on grocery bills and reduce my cholesterol intake, while these poor people are eating like kings?

And who is paying for poor people to live high on the hog while I am reduced to eating hog brains? Rich people like we might be some day if we work hard and win the lottery. Why should someone like Jim Cramer, who deserves to make more than $250,000 for all the great financial advice he has given the last few years, have to "take a pay cut for doing the same job." Shouldn't he in fact get a raise for telling people to continue plowing their money into the stock market as it was plunging downward, which probably helped slow the decline and prop it up long enough to help his friends get out without losing too much?

I think it's time we made the poor do their fair share and stop trying to soak the rich. Before we give the poor one cent more, they should be forced to prove that they have really hit rock bottom by selling everything they have, including their cellphones, flat-screen TVs, fancy clothes, cars and furniture. I know that if I became poor, the first thing I would do after putting the cat to sleep and pawning Mrs. Swift's wedding ring would be to sell my cellphone at the very least. And I certainly wouldn't expect to eat mushroom risotto. If we stopped making it so enjoyable to be poor, maybe we would have fewer lazy, greedy people who are just dying to live in poverty and leech off of the rest of us. Indeed, the reason for our economic decline may be that so many people want the benefits of being poor that they are dragging the economy down with them. We need to stop this rush to be poor before it is too late. So the First Lady should stop visiting soup kitchens and serving them gourmet food, which just encourages them. Only by making poverty less enticing can we hope to to save our economy.

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