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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Kennedy for New York Senate

According to the New York Times, an aide to New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is questioning the credentials of Caroline Kennedy to replace Hillary Clinton as Senator from New York if she is confirmed as Secretary of State in the Obama Administration. Cuomo believes he is qualified to be New York's Senator because he was once married to a Kennedy. But that is not enough. New York's next Senator must actually be named Kennedy. The Kennedy name has a "special magic capital," as Maureen Dowd so poetically calls it. But there are other Kennedys who are just as qualified, if not more so, than Caroline. If we really want the best Kennedy to fill Robert Kennedy's old seat, New York Gov. David Patterson should choose conservative former MTV VJ Kennedy.

Those who are lobbying for Caroline Kennedy, such as New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, have their hearts in the right place. They want to find the candidate who will most annoy and embarrass Hillary to replace her. And appointing Caroline would certainly accomplish that. Although she hasn't voted much or been that involved in politics or even studied the issues, she did make Hillary angry when she and her uncle Sen. Ted Kennedy endorsed Obama over Hillary in the Democratic primary. As I explained at the time, "It is not just that Obama reminds them of Kennedy, it is also that the Clintons remind them of Lyndon Johnson. And if there is anything that the Kennedys don't like, it's a bunch of hillbillies in the White House, which is being kept in trust until a competent Kennedy can be groomed to take it back for its rightful owners. Until that time Obama will do." The Clintons, like Johnson, think of politics as mud wrestling or the roller derby, while the Kennedys see it as a friendly game of touch football. So it must have irked them to see Hillary, the Sandra Day O'Clobber of American politics, besmirching the Senate seat that by rights belongs to the Kennedys.

Appointing Caroline Kennedy to the Senate would make the Hillary-haters happy, but I'm afraid it won't annoy Hillary enough. The few abbreviated press conferences Caroline has had, before her aides cut them off, showed that she isn't the most articulate Kennedy in the world. In a Senate committee hearing, Hillary would make mincemeat of her. But former MTV VJ Kennedy has had quite a lot of experience in the spotlight and is quite articulate. The woman who once simulated fellatio with her microphone while interviewing former New York mayor Rudolph Giuliani would have no problem taking Hillary on. Who knows what she might do with a Senate microphone. In comparison, Caroline Kennedy seems just too nice and polite and would wilt in Hillary's glare.

Kennedy does not currently live in New York and probably doesn't know much about the issues affecting the state, but as far as I know, actually living in New York has never been a requirement to represent the state in the Senate, and she probably knows as much about New York issues as Caroline does. She has also formulated strong stances on other political issues she would have to deal with as a Senator, something Caroline hasn't gotten around to doing yet. And while appointing Caroline has a certain nostalgic appeal for those who want to bring back Camelot and the 1960s, appointing former MTV VJ Kennedy would hearken back to a time more people remember with fondness, the 1990s, when the stock market was doing well and MTV actually played music videos instead of running endless reruns of badly written "reality" shows.

I'm sure appointing Caroline Kennedy would make Hillary grit her teeth, but appointing a Republican washed-up former MTV VJ with even fewer credentials than Caroline would be a more satisfying slap in the face at Hillary. I agree that insulting Hillary by appointing a Kennedy is important, but we need to make sure it's the right Kennedy.

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The Crying of Maureen Dowd

When New York Times reporters walked into their offices last night, people were clustering around one office to watch what they thought they would never see: Maureen Dowd with the unmistakable look of tears in her eyes. A woman gazing through the door was grimacing, saying it was bad. Three guys could not stop watching her, drawn to the "humanized" Dowd. One reporter who covers security issues cringed. "We are at war," he said. "Is this how she'll interview Kim Jong-il?" Another reporter joked: "That crying really seemed genuine. I'll bet she spent hours thinking about it beforehand." He added dryly: "Crying doesn't usually work in journalism. Only in relationships."

For years Dowd has been known for her cold, icy, cynical demeanor. Though some friends claim she is actually warm and witty in person, most of her colleagues don't see her as very likable and use another word to describe her that rhymes with "witch." But Hillary Clinton's stunning victory in the New Hampshire primary finally caused Dowd's calculatedly controlled demeanor to crack. While some believed her waterworks were genuine, others speculated that Dowd must have hired an actress to teach her how to cry. Is it unprofessional for journalists to show emotion or could Dowd cry herself to another Pulitzer Prize?

She won the Pulitzer Prize after being embarrassed by a man. She was seen as so controlling that she had to be seen as losing control, as she did while writing about the Monica Lewinsky scandal, which made her soft enough to attract the attention of Pulitzer Prize judges. Bill Clinton's betrayal seemed to have affected her personally, as if she were the wronged woman. Pulitzer judges felt so sorry for her that they gave her the prize. Few believed it had anything to do with her intelligence or talent.

For years Dowd has wanted to show that she is more than just a Clinton hater. She tried her hand at being a Bush hater, reducing everything the Bushes did to the same kind of pat psychological paradigms she used to describe the Clintons. But though she wrote an entire book and innumerable columns describing everything Bush fils did as evidence of an Oedipal struggle with Bush père, her heart just didn't seem to be in it. And the prospect of Hillary getting the nomination reduced her to panic that she would never be anything more than a Clinton hater. A second Pulitzer Prize was beginning to look more and more distant.

But then the prospect that Hillary might lose the nomination gave her cause for hope. An Obama victory meant that she could recycle clichés about race just as she had long recycled clichés about feminism. Pulitzer Prize judges love rehashed ideas about race. There was something liberating in being an Obama Girl, until Obama, too, betrayed her and then she could turn on him along with the rest of the media and ride the Obama backlash to a second Pulitzer. Lately, she had begun to dress differently around the office, showing more cleavage, but not so much to endanger her status as a serious journalist.

So there was a poignancy about seeing Dowd crack with exhaustion from decades of hating the Clintons so much. But there was a whiff of Nixonian self-pity about her choking up. "I just don't want to see us fall backwards into the Clinton era," she said tremulously. In a weirdly narcissistic way, she was crying for us.

A cynical person might say that it was not really Dowd's concern about the fate of our country that brought on her tears, that she was weeping at the prospect of falling back into the Clinton era herself, of having to write the same cynical columns over and over again, as if she believed elections are really about her. But Dowd was not just crying for herself. She was crying for all of the pundits and journalists and bloggers who worry that another Clinton Administration will turn us into Clinton-hating hacks. She was crying for all of us who remember how the peace and prosperity of the Clinton era led directly into the war and economic downturn of the Bush years, something we don't want to happen again. She feels our pain. Try as we might to put a cynical spin on everything Hillary does, despite all of our attempts to pronounce Hillary's candidacy dead on arrival, despite all the polls we quote that show Hillary can't win, it is possible that voters have another idea.

So cry, Dowd, cry. Cry for Chris Matthews who can only weakly protest that he is not obsessed with Hillary. Cry for Dick Morris who faces the prospect of years and years of predictions that never come true. Cry for David Broder who will be nervously counting the silverware at the thought of the Clintons coming back to trash his place again. Cry for Ann Althouse who will soon run out of Freudian food metaphors to bash Hillary with. Cry for all of the pundits, pollsters and prognosticators who have been proven wrong once again, though not so wrong that they will lose their jobs. Cry for all of us, Maureen Dowd. Bury that rag deep in your face. Now is the time for your tears.

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