Day: November 18, 2006

Bush Eliminates Hunger. The Word, That Is

Trish

The Bush administration has eliminated hunger in America, and it was much easier than anyone suspected. They have simply quit using the word.

Yes, the folks who brought you “faith-based initiatives” instead of “lack of separation of church and state,” and “healthy forests” instead of “clear-cutting” are proud to present, “very low food security” instead of “hunger.”

Eliminating hunger was much easier than anyone suspected

…in Chicago, at the Holy Family Food Pantry, the people lining up for assistance know exactly what hunger means.

“I’m running out of food, so I got to find somewhere to get some food,” Terry Sutton said.

But according to the new government report, that doesn’t necessarily make him hungry.

Sutton and others like him have “very low food security.”

“When they hear ‘very low food security’ it sounds like bureaucratic jargon. It doesn’t sound like people who can’t get enough to eat,” said Deborah Leff of the Public Welfare Foundation.

Some say that may be just the point.

We can expect Rush Limbaugh to chime in any time with a screed about fat poor people and how they’re all just faking it.

Meanwhile, groups like USA Harvest pick up the Bush administration’s slack by fighting hunger all over this country and Canada, including Houston, where, over one year later, many of the people displaced by Hurricane Katrina still live. A study conducted in September showed them not doing very well.

While about 60 percent of the evacuees surveyed had been employed in New Orleans before Katrina, a little more than 60 percent are now unemployed. Almost 74 percent have an annual income of less than $15,000, and almost 17 percent have an income of between $15,000 and $25,000.

Guess we ought to do something about that. Maybe we should call them “geographically shifted people of newfound leisure” instead.

Foley Is Back But Where Is His Gaggle?

Jon Ponder

Mark Foley is out of rehab and back in Florida where he attended the funeral of his father. His email contacts with teenaged boys are finally being scrutinized by law enforcement.

Even Mr. Foley must be disappointed to be yesterday’s news so soon.

You wouldn’t necessarily know this from watching cable news, however. Mr. Foley’s re-entry has been relegated to “other news,” at the same time that MSNBC is giving us live shots of a brick wall — the back of the building in Italy where Tom and Katie are to be married today. (The lead story is President Bush’s visit to Asia, where we are all anxiously waiting to see if he will follow in his old man’s shoes and vomit at a state dinner.)

Why wasn’t an angry-looking media gaggle there trampling the lawn in Tucson, shouting questions at Mr. Foley as he skulked out of rehab in a baseball cap? Has Old Media given Mr. Foley a pass out of deference to the death of his father?

Does that sound like them?

What has happened here? Where are the cameras that staked out the comings and goings of former Rep. Gary Condit, Scooter Libby, the Enron gang, Elia Gonzalez, Monica Lewinsky and other scandal figures?

Granted, no one has been killed and no stained GAP clothing has popped up in the Foley scandal — but how did it become a non-story so quickly? Just a few weeks ago, Mr. Foley was a major player in the self-destruction of the Republican Congress and the poster boy of GOP sexual hypocrisy. His party leaders almost undoubtedly knew about his fetish for chicken and covered it up. Investigations are ongoing, and the careers of former Speaker Hastert and other former and current Republican bigwigs could hang in the balance.

Even Mr. Foley must be disappointed to be yesterday’s news so soon.

The media gaggles of yore may have been rude, aggressive and unpleasant but, ugly as they were, at least they were doing their jobs.