Where Have you Gone, Jimmy Braddock?

None of us get to choose the times in which we live. From a cultural and aesthetic standpoint I am a man of the 1940’s, with its grand struggles, big band music and fedora hats. I would have been equally happy as a twenty year old in the 1770’s amidst the revolutionary chaos of our nation’s birth. But, I live in the 21^st century, in a country that no longer makes sense to me and from which I feel increasingly estranged.

I saw this picture, the logjam of overflowing shopping carts abandoned in an aisle at a Walmart somewhere in Louisiana. There was a video of how they got there on YouTube. As I watched, I felt myself recoiling from the world. I tried to conjure up some degree of detachment, to place some emotional distance between me and the story. I read all I could find about the details, hoping to find some mitigating circumstance that would provide me with some intellectual cover. The more I learned, the worse I felt. What I was trying desperately not to believe about the pictures became more and more untenable. The pictures did in fact tell the unfiltered truth, a thousand word tale of what has become of shame in my country. It has vanished, cast off by a people seduced by entitlement.

The facts are few and uncomplicated. The Louisiana Food Stamp EBT debit card program temporarily malfunctioned, suddenly removing all credit limits. Word of the glitch began spreading like wildfire among beneficiaries of the system. Literally within hours, Walmarts in two Louisiana towns became swamped with customers loading up all the carts they could manage to handle, stripping inventory off the shelves. Walmart officials made the mistake of honoring the purchases anyway. When the temporary glitch was finally suddenly fixed hours later, shoppers simply walked away, leaving carts burdened with perishable food abandoned in the aisles. One man racked up $700 worth of goods on his EBT card which carried a .49 credit balance before the windfall.

In America today, it is a dicey business to set about criticizing this sort of thing. Charges of insensitivity or worse, racism, often follow anyone who complains about Food Stamp fraud. In fairness, many who do most of the complaining are actual racists. Still, I read stories like this and something inside me screams out, no, no!! this is just wrong, no matter who is doing this, it’s just wrong!!

I think of Cinderella Man. I remember the look on Jimmy Braddock’s face as he stood in line to get his first public assistance payment. He was at the end of his rope. His family was starving. The money would save their lives. And yet, the shame on his face, the humiliation of having been reduced to charity was almost too much to bear for such a proud man. The most powerful scene in the movie was when, after winning his first big payday fight, Braddock stands in the line again; only this time he’s holding a wad of cash which he gives to the teller, paying back every dollar he received down to the penny. The year was 1936. Today those lines don’t exist. There’s only an EBT debit card, and when that card malfunctions, a feeding frenzy ensues.

I’m not one of those people who think Food Stamps are evil. There exist in this country people who through no fault of their own are in dire straits and desperately need help. We as a people do have a moral obligation to help the least of these, our brethren. But when I see this picture, I see less and less funds available for the truly needy. Because of the greed of people savvy and energetic enough to drop everything and run to Walmart to take advantage of a glitch in the system and yet not energetic enough to find work, these are the people stealing from the needy.

But, this picture will not change anything. This is the country I live in, the land of the free and home of the brave. But it has not always been so. There used to be millions of Jimmy Braddocks.

One Pitch

Day seven of the most miserable weather in Short Pump, Virginia in recent memory happens to be Columbus Day. That means that the banks are closed, the mail doesn’t run, and the government is shutdown. No, wait, the government is already shut down. Does that mean that when it reopens, the union will demand an additional day off as compensation for missing one of their nine paid holidays?

The only thing that redeemed this past weekend was last night’s baseball game between The Detroit Tigers and the Boston Red Sox. I watched the game, I saw what happened, and I still can’t believe it. Through the first 16 innings of this series the Tigers pitching staff had made the Red Sox look like an American Legion team. Between Anibal Sanchez and Max Scherzer, 30 Red Sox hitters had struck out. I can’t remember a more dominating pitching performance in the post season. Down 5-1 in the eighth inning after losing game one, the Sox were on the verge of being swept in their own ball park and looking awfully bad doing it. But there I was watching the Sox somehow load the bases. Tiger manager Jim Leyland then brings his fourth pitcher of the inning in from the bullpen, while David Ortiz strides to the plate looking bored, almost disinterested in the proceedings. Fenway was rocking, the fans were going wild, but Big Papi looks like a man who would rather be back in the clubhouse watching Breaking Bad. Reliever Joaquin Benoit decided to throw Ortiz a changeup on the first pitch, and when the ball ended up in the mitt of the Boston bullpen catcher, Fenway Park was transformed into a madhouse. Big Papi, as he’s done 15 times in the post season, rounded the bases slowly, zero emotion registering on his face, while his teammates jumped up and down like a Little League team after beating the Taiwanese. One inning later, The Sox win on a walk off single by Jarrod Saltalamacchia, who no one will remember twenty years from now. This night was about Big Papi and the magic of one swing, a grand slam home run that brought Boston back from the dead.

Yes, I know that most of America was watching the Cowboys and the Redskins playing a meaningless football game. Yes, I get it that baseball is a shell of its former self, that it has fallen far behind football and maybe even basketball in the imaginations of American sports fans. But for me, nothing in sports can match the sheer emotional drama of one pitcher and one batter going toe to toe with the game on the line. It is ironic that in this most emphatically team sport, the issue so often comes down to an individual match up, the balance of a game, even a season comes down to one pitch, an ill-advised changeup launched into the night by the most clutch hitter in Red Sox history.

God bless baseball.

New Found Respect For Noah

Day 5 without the sun and I’m about ready to curl up in a corner with a Faulkner novel and die. For the past 96 hours my world has been oppressed by low clouds, temperatures in the 50’s, and unrelenting drizzle. Everything is saturated with heavy moisture, and the entire universe smells like that old pair of tennis shoes that you cut the grass in after you accidently left them outside in the rain. At this point I would be thrilled to see even a cloud, anything would be an improvement over the thick charcoal grey canopy of doom hanging over formerly beautiful downtown Short Pump.

To make matters worse, I had my lawn aerated and seeded two weeks ago yesterday, and haven’t been able to cut it since. Now it looks like a field of soy beans out there, thick and gnarly and growing more unmanageable by the minute. I stare at it through the rain-streaked windows and can practically hear it mocking me.

The longer this goes on the more British I feel. “Buck up, old boy,” I encourage myself. For the poor Brits, this is a way of life. I pop in a Downton Abbey DVD and notice the relentless rain as Matthew and Lady Mary stand over the grave of the dear departed Lavinia, umbrellas in their gloved hands, and think how lucky I am not to live in such a place. “Quite right,” I reassure myself.

Still, although I know that surely the sun will return any day now, I grow more annoyed with each new wave of rain. If there were any justice in this world, the entire United States would be enjoying 60 degrees and crisp, bright sunshine, and this dreariness would be limited to the 68 square miles that is the District of Columbia.

A Congressional Lunch

Don’t ask me how I obtained it, but I am in receipt of a taped conversation between two Congressmen. From the noises in the background I can only assume that they were having lunch somewhere, perhaps the Congressional cafeteria. Neither of the Congressmen are identified except for the obvious fact that one is a Republican and the other a Democrat, hereafter referred to as RC and DC. I publish the transcript of their conversation in my role as a citizen-journalist, without editorial comment.

RC: The reason the government is shutdown is because your party is controlled by a bunch of amoral statists who can’t stand the thought of one day going by without the government being there to redistribute wealth.

DC: No, the government is shutdown because your party is controlled by those knuckle dragging Tea Party illiterates who want old people and babies to die without health insurance. Can you pass the salt?

RC: Sure, but take it easy on that stuff. It can send your blood pressure through the roof. Well, some of the Tea Partiers might be a bit irrational, but at least their heart is in the right place. The loons in your party want to install communism and make everybody a ward of the state.

DC: Actually, I heard not long ago that salt isn’t as bad for you as doctors used to think. Better a ward of the state than to live in a country that castrates homosexuals, and wants women to stay at home barefoot and pregnant.

RC: Well, if our women were pregnant, at least we would celebrate it instead of aborting the child. If you guys had your way we would all be homosexual, that way nobody would ever be pregnant. Is it just me or are these rolls a little stale?

DC: Oh sure, you Republicans and your culture of life routine. Please! You guys are all about life until the child is actually born, then you’re the first ones to defund Head Start. You’re right, these rolls are probably left over from yesterday.

RC: Better a culture of life than a culture of death. You Democrats want to abort every baby and then you want then euthanized by Obamacare’s death panels when they get old. How can you live with yourselves? Got any plans for the weekend?

DC: I sleep like a baby at night with a clear conscience, secure in the knowledge that I care deeply about what’s best for humanity. And because I care so much, I get invited to all the best parties in town. Just the other night I got to shake hands with Angelina Jolie. I was hoping to take Barb and the kids to the Smithsonian but since your Neanderthal party shut the government down, that’s out. How about you?

RC: Yeah, we were planning on checking out the WWII memorial but since your Stalinist party turned the National Park Service rangers into your own private Gestapo, I guess that’s out too. Who cares about Angelina Jolie? Last week Jill and I got to meet Megyn Kelly, talk about a babe!

DC: If I weren’t morally opposed to gun ownership, I would be tempted to take an AK-47 to that tramp. Fair and balanced, my ass.

RC: Well, I guess it’s time to head back to the salt mines. Can’t believe you took 30 minutes out of your day to eat lunch, what with all the kickbacks you need to collect from your union thugs.

DC: Same here. The Koch Brothers must be getting worried since they haven’t heard from their most trusted tool in the past fifteen minutes. Give Jill my love.

RC: Will do. Same time tomorrow?

My Morning at Healthcare.gov!!

Since our President didn’t get a single question about Obamacare’s disastrous rollout at his press conference yesterday, I figured that all the “glitches” had been fixed at Healthcare.gov. So, this morning I decided to pay the site a visit. Who knows, maybe I would find some sort of health insurance miracle, or stumble upon some heretofore unknown subsidy that would relieve me of my nearly $1000 monthly insurance expense.

Upon entering the site, I am greeted by a lovely brunette with perfect teeth and just the slightest hint of Latino heritage in her dark eyes. The screen proudly proclaims in large font that the HEALTH INSURANCE MARKETPLACE IS OPEN! It then implored me to click on the apply now tab to see if I qualify for lower costs. Intrigued, I quickly hit the tab and was seamlessly transported to the second screen, this one featuring an older Asian woman and her daughter, both smiling widely as if they had just won the Lottery. Here I’m welcomed to the health insurance marketplace that I was assured was open for business on the first screen. I am then asked to choose between individual/family coverage or small business coverage. Who said there wouldn’t be options with Obamacare? I hit the family coverage tab.

At this point, I am ushered to the Let’s Get Started screen, where I find that before I can sample the wonders of government health care, I must first set up my marketplace account. The first set up screen is straight forward, only asking for my name, the state where I live, and my email address. Then comes the obligatory username and password screen. Finally I’m asked to choose three separate security questions, and for the first time I become uncomfortable. I am given 12 questions to choose from, but all 12 seem…odd. Some examples below:

What is your favorite radio station?

What is a relative’s telephone number which is not your own?

What is the name of the manager at your first job?

Who was the first Republican you voted for?

Ok, ok, I made that last one up, but the other three are legit. Seriously, they want me to offer a relative’s phone number??

Undeterred, I pick the three least intrusive security questions from the list and plow forward. I excitedly press the green create account tab whereupon I am informed that an email has been sent to the email address I provided and I should open it and go to the highlighted link. Sure enough, there is the Healthcare.gov email awaiting me in my inbox. I click on the link and am greeted by a yellow screen with the encouraging words, Almost there. This step may take a few minutes. The time was 7:10 am.

At exactly 7:18, large black letters declared the disappointing news that, THE SYSTEM IS DOWN AT THE MOMENT. In smaller letters underneath this shocking news was the comforting assurance that “We’re working to resolve the issue as soon as possible. Please try again later.” Damn glitches.

At this point, I decide to go back to the beginning and chose small business instead of individual/family. Perhaps the business side of the website was more amenable. Here a distinguished elderly African American woman is beaming at me while holding a phone to her ear. I begin to wonder if men are even allowed to be on this site since all of the smiling people I’ve seen are women. The small business screen is a bit more involved, explaining that in order to apply for group coverage; a five step gauntlet must be endured. I clicked through the steps and realized that my small business did not qualify for any subsidy. Imagine that?

So, there you have it. Can’t wait until Obamacare is fully implemented. Can’t wait!

Unsupervised Cartwheels. Finally a Thing of the Past

I read the headline and immediately thought that it couldn’t possibly be accurate, there had to be another side to the story. So I clicked on it and read the entire sorry tale and discovered that yes, children at the Weber Middle School in New York would henceforth be banned from playing with “hard” balls during recess. No more footballs, baseballs, or lacrosse balls would be tolerated. In addition, games of tag would be forbidden, and no cartwheels without the aid of a coach.

Port Washington Schools Supt. Kathleen Maloney explained that there had been a rash of playground injuries of late, and that some of the injuries could become quite serious. “We want to make sure that our children have fun, but are also protected.” A spokesperson from the local emergency room offered that he had been seeing some head injuries, along with bumps and scrapes of late and that there were worries about concussions. The story also included this sentence:

Without helmets and pads, children are much more susceptible to getting hurt, experts said.

Luckily for this “expert’s” self respect, his or her name was withheld.

When I was in middle school, recess was my only salvation. Let’s just say that sitting at a desk in a classroom for hours at a time didn’t mix well with my personality type. Every day I would count the minutes until recess. Whenever it rained or snowed, it was something very close to hell for me. What did me and my friends do during recess? I see no need to go into the gory details here, but suffice it to say that if our activities didn’t result in at least one bump or scrape, we would have thought it a colossal failure.

When I read stories like this, it makes me wonder how it is that the people who wind up running public schools are so pathetically uninspiring. What is it about the education bureaucracy that produces such people? From zero-tolerance policies that result in little Johnnie being kicked out of school for pretending to throw a pretend grenade into a pretend fox hole, to the banning of unsupervised cartwheels, modern public education seems to be run by an army of soulless, rubber stamping, idiots who couldn’t pour water out of a boot if the instructions were written on the heel.

It hasn’t always been like this. The Principals at the schools I attended were large and in charge and not to be trifled with, but they were also Solomon-like in their application of justice. I remember the time when I got caught loosening the tops of all the salt shakers at the teachers table in the cafeteria back in elementary school, (I was ratted out by Frank Hargrove). When I was called to the principal’s office, it scared me to death. I was given very strict punishment, but I’ll never forget the smile on his face as I was explaining how I had came up with the idea from a Three Stooges show. He told me that he had seen that one too and it was one of his favorites. How cool was that? Then the hammer came down and I had to help the janitors clean toilets after school. Can you imagine any elementary school child today being made to clean toilets after school?  Between child labor lawyers and union work rules, any Principal imaginative enough to come up with such a punishment would be sued within an inch of his life. Besides:

Children being forced to do degrading and humiliating work at a young age as punishment might suffer self-esteem issues later in life, experts say.

So, thanks to lawyers, helicopter parents, and woosified education bureaucrats, the kids at Weber Middle School will be sitting on the ground in encounter groups during recess, made safe from the runaway skinned knee epidemic by the brave and proactive Ms. Maloney.

Maybe she has a future at the Department of Education.

Throwing a Flag on Breast Cancer

 

The NFL in October can only mean one thing, the color pink. Yes, it’s that time of year again, when that most testosterone infused game becomes infested with pink arm bands, pink towels, and this past weekend even pink penalty flags, in honor of the single most hyped disease since the Bubonic Plague, breast cancer. For an entire month football fans have their awareness raised to dizzying heights, and money is raised in a race for the cure. A few observations.

Breast cancer is the third leading cause of death among women in the United States, behind heart disease and lung cancer. My mother had breast cancer and one of my best friends is suffering with it even now. So, why do I feel oddly annoyed when I see 300 pound men running around on a football field wearing pink cleats? Why does finding a cure for breast cancer seem like such a commercialized crusade? More importantly, how on Earth did the National Football League manage to get co-opted by the Susan G. Komen Foundation?

Then, it hit me. Never take your eye off the money. After all, the NFL isn’t about football anymore; the NFL is a marketing colossus. This whole breast cancer thing is about expanding the brand. Football has locked up practically every demographic of men in America, now it’s time to lock up the women too! Brilliant.

But still, breast cancer? If heart disease and lung cancer kill more women every year than breast cancer, why not hype those? I guess since men are far more interested in breasts than lungs, the question answers itself. But, who plays football? Men. And what kills 30,000 men every year? That’s right, prostate cancer! So, how about a month long propaganda blitz about prostate cancer? The problem would be coming up with a signature color. What color would be appropriate for such a disease? Yellow? Black? Perhaps rust, to symbolize leaky pipes? The possibilities are endless. If breast cancer can become the cause célèbre of professional football, maybe prostate cancer can get a gig with the WNBA or the LPGA?