Hungry Punditry

I shoulder my way into my apartment, staggering over the threshold with an odd assortment of grocery bags swinging from my arms, milk and juice jugs wedged in my elbows, keys dangling from my pinky finger, the mail clamped in my mouth. I lurch to the kitchen and lean over towards the countertop, shedding my awkward burdens as I go. The entrance is far from graceful, but it is effective; I got everything from the car to the kitchen in one trip, no breakage.

     

After the ritual sorting and storage of the groceries, I sit to examine the mail. Tossing aside the credit card offers and discount cable service announcements (all addressed to other people, mostly former residents of this apartment), I see that the only correspondence for me is from the Jefferson County Department of Human Services. They are informing me that my Food Assistance Benefits will be reduced by some undetermined amount the day after Halloween due to a federal mandate. Or something like that. It is not the first time I have received such mail, nor will it be the last. The only consistent feature of government programs—in my experience—is inconsistency.

     

The night before, I had been treated to a television montage of condescending heads atop expensive suits oozing and spewing opinions like sewage from a backed-up toilet. On that particular night, the Topic of Outrage was government assistance programs, or as they like to call them, “entitlements” (du-dun-DUUHMM!).

Cable pundit talk shows, especially those that pass themselves off as “news”, tend to leave me in an emotionally cauterized, semiconscious state wherein I can only catch about every third or fourth word, but I got the gist: people on welfare are un-American freeloaders. The specific arguments varied as wildly as the credibility of their sources, but it isn’t really about the facts put forth or even the words surrounding them. The intended takeaway is sitting plain as day on the corners of Bill O’Reilly’s arrogant sneer: If these people were truly decent, hardworking Americans they would have done well enough for themselves that they wouldn’t need welfare. Clearly, anyone who takes government assistance is just a lazy nanny-state-teat-sucker stealing tax money from “real” Americans.

Sitting now at my kitchen table, looking over the paltry supplies I am praying will sustain me to the next paycheck, I am gripped by a sudden rush of anger. The socialist-anarchist revolutionary inside me wants to haul each of these smug strife-mongers out of their studio chairs by their thousand-dollar haircuts and just smack and shake them until all the hateful poison they promote comes rattling out of them to scatter on the floor alongside their teeth.

I cannot claim to have the solution to all (or any) of society’s ills, but I do know that spreading discord and enmity is a quality that J.K. Rowling assigned to Voldemort, not Dumbledore. Further, it is impossible to imagine that these people—in their half-million-a-year media positions—have any insight whatsoever into the lives of welfare recipients. Until you have sat, month after month, and watched as each paycheck vanishes with ever-diminishing effectiveness into sheaves of bills and expenses, wondering how the hell you are ever going to get yourself out of indirect indentured servitude to credit companies, insurance firms, and landlords, you have no right to make sweeping generalizations about the people who do suffer from the pressure of perpetual financial entrapment and the hollow, grinding despair of unshakeable debt.

Certainly there are people who cut corners, exaggerate claims, and manipulate assistance programs to their advantage. There are also spectacularly wealthy people who do the same with the tax code, campaign finance, and the legal system. At every income level some people are honest earners of everything they have, and some are conniving shitweasels looking to get ahead by any means necessary. People are people, regardless of economic class, and some blow-dried suit monkey or steely-eyed hairspray hag on TV implying (or in some cases, stating outright) that poor people are poor because they are shiftless and inferior is no different from an 1880’s robber-baron invoking “Social Darwinism” as justification for his enormous blood-soaked fortune while his workers starve.

My first proposal is to make it a federal crime on par with treason to become a television pundit. I would especially like to include a mandatory minimum sentencing structure for anyone found guilty of aiding and abetting Bill O’Reilly, but that is all really just to make myself feel better. There is no point in arguing about the scientific or statistical validity of these commentators' content. The dissemination of useful information or the opening of a constructive debate, these things are not the point of these shows. The point of these shows is to create entertaining television through zealotry and emotional manipulation, a goal that they pull off in spades. Trouble is, lots of people take them seriously.

For now, I guess I’ll just go ahead and make dinner on the government’s dime. All I had to do was fill out several forms several times, take numerous trips for three-hour waits in a depressing county office, agree to keep them apprised of all future changes in my income, and allow them to send me lots of incomprehensible, contradictory, and vaguely threatening mail. But hey, freeloading isn’t free.