Posts tagged as The Poor
Ask "Them": "Why Don't You Feel an Obligation to Protect the Poor"?
I spent many summer nights as a teenager throwing water balloons at cars. It's not a terribly responsible or considerate thing to do, but it was either that or dry ice bombs, which never really seemed to work and almost always resulted in an intense, never-ending round of "It's not blowing up. Go screw the lid on tighter." "YOU go screw it on tighter." "No, YOU go screw it on tighter." I remember one particular night in which a car hadn't passed by for the better part of an hour. Just as we had decided to call it quits and go watch "The Arsenio Hall Show," headlights painted the mailbox up the street from our hiding place. I waited for a few seconds and then jumped up and whipped a pear-shaped water balloon at the passing car. It probably took about a second for the balloon to travel end-over-end from my hand to the side of the car, and this second was ten times longer than the amount of time I needed to realize that the car was a police car, to recognize that throwing a water balloon at it had been a mistake, and to wish I could extend my arm and take it back. READ MORE
The Horrible Ramadan Servant Exodus
You've all seen the New York Times TV spots, where one comely Yuppie after another steps forward to testify to the section of the ever-shrinking Weekend editions of the paper that infuses his or her high-consumption life with a roseate sense of well-being. The refrain of the ad underscores the social utility of this sense of plugged-inness: "Join the conversation," the voiceover coos, even though conversing with these pasteboard ingenues is just about the last thing any sane American would care to do. READ MORE
At the Forum: the Los Angeles Field Hospital
The first sound you hear is the high-pitched wheeze of 60 dentists' drills buzzing inside of open mouths. Splayed out on a show floor generally reserved for millionaire athletes and rock bands are: a hundred dental chairs; five RVs filled with X-ray equipment; mammogram machines; a 60-person triage station; rubber gloved paramedics; long picnic tables of surgical equipment; and about 1,000 recipients of free healthcare. Since last Tuesday and until tomorrow, the Forum in Inglewood is the biggest free healthcare clinic in Los Angeles. The bill will be picked up by the Remote Area Medical Expedition, a 1,300-person volunteer effort of medical professionals. RAM got their start treating villagers in the Amazon in 1985. Now they have ventured to the first world-their first time treating patients in Los Angeles. READ MORE
Bloomberg's Newest Technocrat
New York City's Housing Authority, whose buildings house 400,000 residents and are plagued with electrical outages pretty much every time day it rains, has a new boss! John Rhea is the former managing director of the Lehman Brothers global consumer retail group, but also worked at JP Morgan Chase. Also he gives money to political campaigns completely indiscriminately. John Edwards and Mitt Romney, wow. Bloomberg's point in hiring him was that he take the deficit-riddled nightmare of NYCHA into hand. It would be some sort of fallacy-addled argument for me to point out that Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy just last September, right?
