According to this survey from 2001, a minority of US Americans believe that those on welfare really need it. I wonder how this has changed in 10 years?
I wish Ted Williams the best. He’s had a hard row to hoe, and he seems smart and talented (even if I personally find “radio voice” to be one of the most annoying sounds known to womanity) and earnest.
But.
But if I see one more weepy FB posting, or “Bart’s People” morning news feature, or fist-pumping, re-tweeted summary of his overnight success story, I’m gonna start throwing some ‘bows.
And here’s why: every time we replay the footage that Columbus reporter uploaded and hear Williams recount his sad story, only to rejoice at the “justice” of a flood of job offers and promises of support, we are buying into a narrative that says people fail on their own, and should succeed only 1) if they “deserve” to, and 2) with the assistance of private entities, be they charities, businesses, or individuals.
Fuck that.
Now, I don’t know Williams’ whole story, and really, I’m only using his case as an example. I could just as easily bring up any episode of a self-help reality show, like The Biggest Loser or Extreme Makeover: Home Edition (which the Dude and I refer to as “Cancer House”), or any “inspiring” Oprah guest, or whatever. It’s all the same story. Someone is down on hir luck, due to hir own “youthful indiscretions” (the label used when we want to forgive someone’s errors)/the dirty dealings of another/the cruel hand of fate, and, having decided that they have suffered enough/wrongly/for too long!, corporations will swoop in and proudly supply that person with stuff, purely out of their sense of goodness and not all having anything to do with PR or product placement, no ma’am!
And we all get to feel warm and fluffy, maybe shed a bonerkilling tear or two, and then go back to whatever we were doing, without another thought about the systems that leave people to fall so far, so fast, and with no formal recourse.
I read this story from truthout (which you should be reading on the regular) a few days ago, and although it’s long, it’s worth reading and has everything to do with Ted Williams’ story. A brief excerpt:
As shared responsibilities give way to individual fears, human suffering and hardship disappear behind the disparaging discourse of individual responsibility in which the poor, unemployed, homeless and hungry bear the ultimate blame for their own misfortune. The neoliberal appeal to self-responsibility and the politics of shame now function as a kind of parlor magic in making disappear any trace of the larger social and systemic forces wreaking havoc on American society. In this discourse of privatization, there are no public or systemic problems, only individual troubles with no trace or connection to larger social forces. Market infatuation with profits and self-interest not only erodes public values and the moral dimensions of the larger social order, but also creates the conditions for a state whose governance is now outsourced to corporate interests. And as the corporate state replaces the democratic state, however minimal its current form, there is nothing to bind ordinary citizens to the notion of democratic governance and a social state. Instead, the state becomes an object of both disdain and fear.
Allow me to repeat: I’m happy for Williams, truly. But how many other Ted Williamses are out there, who have no choice but to wait for their one-in-a-million chance for MegaCorp to discover them and set them up with all the products they need? And how many more people (who have plenty) will use this story as “proof” that the American Dream is alive and well, even as they shake their fists at Big Gummint and turn a blind eye to the hundreds and thousands who have the bad fortune to suffer in less media-friendly ways?
1) If you look up that study on tears, it is *again* the case that for most of their results the error bars are big enough that the results aren’t very convincing (in my opinion). I can pull up the paper again and post the graphs if anyone’s interested. Also their biggest sample size was 50 people.
2) I was thinking about this a little bit yesterday, ruminating on a sign I saw in France that encouraged people to follow some law by saying, “When we each take a small step, together we can move great distances”. I thought how wonderful it would be to live in a society where that was the organizing principle rather than the bootstraps nonsense we currently have. …sigh.
The American Dream… where “stuff” “solves” “everything.”
@baraqiel: “When we each take a small step, together we can move great distances”. I thought how wonderful it would be to live in a society where that was the organizing principle rather than the bootstraps nonsense we currently have. …sigh.
It’s a nice concept, but I don’t think that’s the organizing principle in France, either. The French—and the Sarkozy government in particular—are not exactly raising the bar when it comes to creating a just, egalitarian society.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Pursuit of Harpyness, Vyckie D. Garrison. Vyckie D. Garrison said: @TPoHarpyness: How to Succeed in the US without Really Trying: I wish Ted Williams the best. H… http://bit.ly/gJeMLA #feminist #women [...]
@Becky – No, I know, I didn’t mean to imply that it was. The fact that they can post something like that in public without it being laughable is something, but that’s obviously not how the country is run for the most part. Still, I think it’s a nice thought.
A bit OT, but “Cancer House” makes me snort. I’m borrowing it to upset my friends.
@Becky: It’s not for a lack of attempts!
A man walks into a bookstore and says to the proprietor, “I’d like to buy a copy of the French Constitution.”
The bookseller looks at the man and replies, “I’m sorry, sir, but we don’t carry periodicals.”
“…corporations will swoop in and proudly supply that person with stuff, purely out of their sense of goodness and not all having anything to do with PR or product placement, no ma’am!”
What’s so frustrating to me is how a few very visible, dramatic displays of charitable behavior seem to be enough to distract the general public from the fact that greedy corporate behavior – the kind of crap that goes on the other 99.8% of the time – contributes so greatly to the societal inequities that screw the majority of people in the first place.
A few months ago, a Big Bank did this thing, ostensibly to support small businesses, where you got some kind of small cash reward if you used Big Bank’s credit card at a small business. The site where I saw this campaign being touted had one of those Facebook “like” buttons, and a bazillion people had “liked” it….because Big Bank cares so much about small business owners, y’all!!! I’m sure the campaign had nothing whatsoever to do with the interest Big Bank would gain from your using their credit card (that would likely greatly outweigh the costs of their puny cash-back incentive in the aggregate).
This leads to another peeve of mine – this whole attitude that certain less-fortunate or struggling groups are only worth helping if it benefits the helper as much or more. The underhanded nature of these kinds of campaigns are always excused because apparently the impure motives are negated by the short-term and transitory “benefit” to the disadvantaged group. You also see this excuse used when, e.g., some actor or actress who needs to rehabilitate a damaged reputation suddenly becomes interested in helping exploited children in India, Africa, or where ever (with cameras tagging along, of course). Populations are oppressed and disadvantaged, in part, because they are seen as worthless unless they can be exploited for a more advantaged group’s benefit. When the “help” offered to disadvantaged groups is predicated on there being some larger benefit to the helper, this pattern gets further entrenched and perpetuated, and that, it seems to me, makes things worse, not better in the long run.
Ugh, sorry to go on and on. I guess I’m just really fucking sick of self-interested behavior being lauded as charity.
Nothing to be sorry for, tall. I wish more people would call out that bogus BS for what it is.
I fear the guy will be in a ditch somewhere in a matter of months. The Susan Boyle Treatment is probably not going to end well.
It’s the Calvinist world view: God rewards the good with riches and punishes the bad with poverty. Nowadays we see the lottery or some eccentric millionaire as God, that’s all.
What is with that silly study anyhow? Why does this nonsense get funded? What are they going to do, market women’s tears as a treatment for sex offenders?
@BearDownCBears: I laughed at that.
I’m all for taking responsibility for one’s life and decisions, but so many people forget that a) many people in this world exploit other people and b) not everyone who is exploited has the power to change their situation. In fact very many don’t.
In fact most of us play a role in both a and b of that sentence, but some more to one side than the others.
Relevant!
NYMag on his ex-wife: “Not only did Patricia Kirtley raise four daughters alone after Williams (“who seems to be a nice guy,” the paper speculates) left his family, but she also took in a baby boy he had with another woman. What’s more, she did it all while being partially blind.”
I’ve been really unhappy with the erasing of both 1) the family and people he left behind and 2) the way too many people who are homeless, showing just how shitty our societal support system is.
Great post, PhDork. On a somewhat related note, I’ve really begun to notice how often unemployment insurance benefits are referred to in the news simply as jobless benefits or unemployment benefits, effectively erasing the fact that (with the exception of the extension of benefits) these benefits are INSURANCE that people have been paying into, sometimes for their entire working lives! Words really matter here, because this increases the perception that the unemployed are “getting something” others are not.
Another thing I’ve noticed in the news is the disparagement of even workers who have been laid off, implying that those workers were laid off because they just weren’t quite as good as the others and this was a convenient time to drop the dead weight. I have no doubt that sometimes this is true, but it sure is a convenient excuse for corporate America. See: Ben Stein is a jerk.
@petiteXL: Hey, rhetorical switcheroos are the name of the game. After they hiked up payroll tax to buy bonds for the SS Trust Fund in the 80s after they figured out the Boomers weren’t going to replace themselves, because SS had to “pay for itself,” that didn’t stop the government from using that cash-flow to cushion the impact of deficit-busting wars and tax cuts, because hey, it’s all revenue, right? However, when it’s time to talk about the deficit, SS suddenly has to pay for itself again.
@BearDownCBears – Yes, I agree about the rhetorical switcheroos and that they’ve always happened, but has the “little guy” ever been so roundly blamed for his predicament in the news? I ask seriously, because in my own memory and what I can recall from what I’ve read about the past, I don’t think they have. Certainly policies/politicians have been attacked, but the extreme emphasis on the individual these days seems new to me. There are just so many “news” articles implying this and the effects are so pernicious:
Refusing to Hire the Unemployed
Regarding that “Big Bank” who looked like they wanted to support small businesses…
I actually asked a small business owner about that campaign and they said that their shop doesn’t take the credit card of that Big Bank because the Big Bank charges a large fee to businesses to be in their network. So the campaign was really only going to reward those small businesses that already pay the fee to belong to the network of the Big Bank and their credit card. It’s not like they were promoting small biz in general, by a long shot – just trying to rack up more fees for themselves.
Ted Williams headed to rehab. Oh man, you mean throwing a bunch of money at him doesn’t solve all of his problems?
[...] pressure has on individual lives continues. Just look at the way in which we’ve personalized unemployment during this most recent [...]