My first stop was the seafood counter, where I found the thickest swordfishsteak I could, which at $18.99 per pound also turned out to be the most expensive item in the department. Then I headed to the coffee section, where I dropped $11.99 for a pound of fresh roasted beans.
From there, the milk aisle, where $8 bought a half gallon of pure organic goat’s milk. Nearby was the cheese section, where I found a tiny wedge of fancy-looking cheese from some European city I’ve never heard of and threw it my cart.
Last I hit the produce section, where I discovered a small but tasty-looking container ofChanterelle mushrooms. Price? $13.99, plus tax.
At the checkout line, I whipped out my shiny new Electronic Benefits Transfer card and watched the cashier ring up my order. The total (minus the cheese, which I discarded at the last moment) came to $51.10. Not bad for a gourmet meal, especially since I wasn’t paying for it.
THE DAILY CALLER INVESTIGATION! It took an investigation to break this shit wide open! The important case of some asshole being able to afford fancy food! Which proves that … somebody bought fancy food, with his food stamps! And didn’t pay for it! Except he did, with his taxes prior to needing food stamps, or he will be paying for it, with his taxes, after he gets off food assistance. In summation, screw him basically, because this is stupid.
Which is really what I want to talk about. Melissa and her commenters have already covered the food policing and nonsense that ensues whenever somebody poor isn’t adequately punishing him- or herself for being poor by looking very sad at the checkout counter with one can of beans. I mean, the hell do I care what you buy with your food stamps? I take precisely the amount of interest in what you buy with your food stamps as I would expect you to take of what I would buy with mine, which is to say, don’t you have TV to watch or something? Go watch TV.
No, what’s annoying to me about this type of “investigation” is that, its home on a right-wing smuggery & stroke session blog notwithstanding, it’s fairly typical of the not-important shit we make sound like horrible scandal in the news nowadays. Some waiter somewhere didn’t wash his hands! Some woman got away with shoplifting! Somebody bought a flat-screen TV! OMFG, we’d better kill all welfare programs like burning with fire so that no one is ever able to get away with anything ever again!
People, we have a limited amount of time on this planet. We have an even more limited amount of time we can devote to both doing and consuming journalism, even right-wing journalism. Can we not ever have a discussion about how, on balance, one person being a dick doesn’t doom our society?
Every system can be gamed. I’m not talking about deliberately ignoring the absence of basic safeguards to ensure good stewardship of public funds, but: Every bit of kindness in the universe can be taken advantage of, and I’m just so done listening to people be shocked and appalled when that turns out to be the case.
A.