What Would He Do?
While listening again to last week's This American Life episode (which I mentioned on Sunday - and I again suggest you give a listen to, especially that it's now available for free listening using Real Player) I was reminded of another aspect of the program I'd wanted to discuss.
In one section, host Ira Glass plays a clip from Bill O'Reilly, where O'Reilly starts off by saying something I'd found myself saying late last week, that it wasn't so much a racial matter as one of class. That it was the poor who were left behind, powerless to help themselves. O'Reilly then takes the following lesson from it:
"If you're poor, you're powerless. Not only in America but everywhere on Earth. If you don't have enough money to protect yourself from danger, danger's gonna find you. The aftermath of Hurricane Katrina should be taught in every American school. If you don't become educated, it you don't develop a skill and force yourself to work hard, you'll most likely be poor, and sooner or later you'll be waiting on a symbolic rooftop waiting for help. Chances are that help will not be quick in coming."It's a quintessential American thread - the essence of Horatio Alger's tales and at the very heart of The American Dream, picking up on a more hopeful thread than Dickens, where monetary salvation generally came from finding out one is really the heir to a great fortune - so it's hardly a surprising thing to be called up at such a time.
Following this, 18 year old Ashley Nelson (author of The Combination), one of those who found herself trapped in New Orleans, is presented with O'Reilly's comments. This is how she responded when asked what stood out in his statements:
"If you're rich you live, if you're poor you die. I... I had no idea it was a crime to be poor... and the punishment was death."Looking it over, I'm sure that the lesson Bill O'Reilly is pushing will be the one that many will learn, and it could lead to some inspiring stories. It's important for people to strive to make the most of themselves, as it will empower them and be the source of considerable self esteem.
Still, it strikes me as sad - and this may seem odd, coming from someone who doesn't believe in a Creator & Caretaker God, someone who generally eschews the practice of drawing on the Bible for much of anything - to think that no one might come away from this with a burning mission to ensure that this doesn't happen again. I mean, really... turn this into the start of a parable and try to imagine a young Jesus coming out of this deciding to be a big success so that this would never happen to him again or to his kids. The thought that not even one child who came through this would be inspired to make the world a place where this wouldn't happen, rather than simply shifting his or her lot from the Have Nots to the Haves, is a sad window on a cold, cold future.
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Comments
That's the right parable...of one inspired by undeserved tragedy and loss to prevent its
repetition at anyone else's expense in the same coin as was extracted from Bruce...
Of course, this philosophy makes a lot of false assumptions, with the chief among them being that you can just decide not to be poor once being poor becomes uncomfortable.
I know a lot of conservatives (and idneed hold a few conservative views myself, though most conservatives -- and liberals -- would toss me right out of their club house), and I don't know anyone who thinks poor people should suffer so they are motivated to not be poor.
The dialogue fairly writes itself!
THUG: (spotting Bat-Jesus lurking on a nearby rooftop) CHRIST!
BAT-JESUS: Good Lord! That jewel thief has somehow penetrated my secret identity!
SIMON THE BOY WONDER: Let me use the loaves and fishes cannon on him, Bat-Jesus!
BAT-JESUS: No, little friend. The only weapon we need in the war on evil... is love!!!!
SIMON THE BOY WONDER: (reaching into his Holy Utility Belt, Bat-Jesus) Okay, fine, the Love The Neighbor With A Mortar Shell Bazooka it is, BJ...
Dave & Mike: This underscores how, despite the seemingly monolithic political force of the GOP since the early 1990s they, too, are a "Big Tent" operation that hasn't reached the critical point of fragmentation that the Democrats did. This is a point I've made in conversation for years: There are still Reagan Republicans many of whom are, ideologically, more properly Libertarians (primarily looking for a small, uninvolved federal government) who should be up in arms at the spend, spend, spend policies of the Bush administration.
In the end, I'll side with Dave on this particular point, as I see it as a fairly strong conservative thread that they believe, deep down, that Poor = Lazy. It's a loathing for these perceived slackers and a fear of federal programs that take money from the working people to support them that drives many in the current GOP voting base who aren't driven by other ideological issues. There may be millions of people out there who still believe Reagan's "welfare queen" fantasy.
H: Quiet, you. ;) Playful blasphemies!
Because of all of the conservative people I know, I've never heard any one of them say that.
Have you?
It's a cornerstone of the Reagan Republican message. The message of inclusion is that they (the party) understand that you work hard for everything you have, and it's not fair for Liberals to come in and pick your pockets to feed people who are too lazy to get out of bed and go to work. Sure, we'd all like to sleep in, but we can't because we accept our responsibilities, and if they did that too they wouldn't stay poor. (This then extends to the belief that within every hardworking American is an independently wealthy person fighting to get out, so a progressive tax system is wrong because it penalizes the wealthy for their success.)
Yes, I honestly believe this is a commonly held view on some level, though most wouldn't say it in front of someone they think will jump on them about it. People are especially guarded about it because the discussion quickly jumps the rails from a matter of monetary class to one of race.
SIMON THE BOY WONDER: Holy whimsical obscenity, Bat-Jesus! He's never SEEN the show, has he?
BAT-JESUS: Never mind, little friend. The Sawguin has apparently escaped jail again and is once more polluting otherwise excellent comment threads with his trite and banal non-witticisms! To the Christmobile!
F.X: KA-POW! BIFF! BAM! WHACK!