Newt Gingrich's Profound Insights On Poverty - AmericanProspect

[WillyT]

If you really wanna get depressed, check out some of the comments on this article.

Newt Gingrich's Profound Insights On Poverty
Evoking vicious stereotypes (racial and otherwise), the presidential candidate goes after the grumpy old white people vote.
PAUL WALDMAN - AmericanProspect
DECEMBER 2, 2011

<snip>

One thing every politician is supposed to display is empathy, the ability to put oneself in the place of others and see things from their perspective. Empathy is a habit of mind, but it's also a product of experience. It's hard to see things from another's perspective if you know absolutely nothing about their lives. But even if you have no direct experience, if you have the proper habit of mind you can at least take whatever information you've gleaned and make some attempt to understand people. Keeping that in mind, I give you Newt Gingrich, talking about why he thinks child labor laws ought to be done away with so we can start putting kids to work as janitors and such:

"Really poor children, in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works. So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day, they have no habit of I do this and you give me cash unless it's illegal."

Read that again. Newt believes that if you live in a poor neighborhood, there is no one you know who works. He actually seems to think that in poor neighborhoods, everyone is just sitting around, except for some drug dealers. What can you possibly say to something like that? Now, it may be that Newt isn't such an idiot that he actually believes that. Maybe he's just pandering to the prejudices of his audience. As Benjy Sarlin pointed out yesterday http://2012.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/12/newt-gingrichs-secret-weapon-old-people.php Newt's campaign is being built on old people, and being that he's running in the Republican primary, that means old white people. Telling old white people that kids today, particularly black* kids today, are a bunch of lazy nogoodniks who don't know the value of a day's work is going to get you a lot of nodding heads.

But this is an excellent case study in how Newt operates. He comes up with a crazy idea -- why not make poor kids clean the toilets in between classes at school? -- then when challenged, he comes up with a rationale for the crazy idea built on an even more insane and factually wrong socio-cultural analysis. The fact that the more he talks the crazier it gets only matters if he isn't telling you what you want to hear.

<snip>

More: http://prospect.org/article/newt-gingrichs-profound-insights-poverty

:kick:

[Glimmer of Hope]

1. Really poor people probably work their ass off for minimum wage jobs.

I think he is pandering and he is an evil pos.

[The Genealogist]

2. So conversely, kids in rich neighborhoods...

which are apparently drug free (haha) are working their tails off? Right.

[dimbear]

3. It's a shame there's no tape of Newt begging his parents to pay his way thru college.

That would be worth millions to the Romney fans.

[Tsiyu]

4. I've hired and trained many poor kids

and I have watched them work themselves silly.

The last time I worked for someone else, everyone worked hard but "BooBooSeepyhead" as I called him, the son of a rich man who only worked for fun. The restaurant owner defended him when he told me it took him five minutes to make a salad.

"So if half the people in the dining room - 30 people - order the special salad, some of them won't get their salads for two HOURS?" I asked, incredulously.

"That's right. It takes him that long and stop being mean to him!!" POor Booboo Seepyhead!!!!

He was also the expo. It was a clusterf**k for any patrons who were not obviously wealthy, as this little rich snot. They did indeed often wait over an hour to be served a simple salad.

[WillyT]

5. Story For You... Which I Have Now Decided To Post On It's Own...

I worked at a semi-swanky hotel/restaurant in the 90's...

And one night we were informed that the Jaguar Club of California was coming up to Occupy our establishment this one particular weekend.

Our response was...Cool, will make some serious cash (tips).

So... on the day before the entire group was to show up, the President of the club, and his wife, showed up to get settled in and check the place out.

Now you have to understand that the REAL restaurant is upstairs in this building, but we do/did have a "Bar Menu" in the downstairs bar... which is the size of an aircraft carrier, complete with a mezzanine level for which the bartender (me) was responsible.

Anywho... it's not a particular busy night, and the President of the JC and squeeze are eating and drinking at the bar. When they finish... he leaves a $3.00 tip on a $57.00 tab.

Now I'm fairly new at this place, and I'm not really comfortable chasing these guys down and bitching about the tip. So I did not. But...

When THE JCP went to use the men's room, the squeeze looked over her shoulder, saw him as gone, and promptly reached into the "no man's zone" (that little dipped down part where the tip was, where the bartender makes the drinks, and where in some certain bars you might end up with a broken hand if you were to be so bold as to rescind a tip...)

But trying to be mellow and understanding... I just file it, and do not react... at all. I just figure that's the way these guys end up with Jaguars.

:shrug:

Now... the NEXT NIGHT... the rest of the Jaguar Club shows up...

And now I'm the best buddy/friend of the PJC & Squeeze...

And I'm being funny, and I'm working my ass off, and they are throwing $5's, $10's, & $20's at me. And I'm keeping an eye on the President's wife.

:evilgrin:

But at one point... in the middle of my little tourism/must see/hilarious History of the area performance... the president's wife... in the middle of a dead space... points at me and says... "So, where do YOU people live?"

Now my momma told me exactly what that question meant...

And as I Rolodexed the various "FUCK YOU" responses in my mind that rose to the occasion... I took another path.

As the room was now COMPLETELY SILENT... I said, with a smile...

"Oh... they have a migrant waitressing, bar tending, cheffing encampment right up the road. They bus us in so as to serve you, and then bus us out so as to not offend you."

Now I was actually risking my job here... And I even went through the swinging door into the wine/food storage hallway, only to find my boss, my manager, doubled over in laughter...

I asked him if I was fired, and he said, "I have no idea." And continued enjoying the moment.

When I re-emerged into the bar there was a couple of hundred dollars of tip in "the rail", and all I could fathom, was that the rest of the California Jaguar Club had had enough of these two too.

And... I was not fired after all.

:evilgrin:

[Tsiyu]

8. Nice one, Willy T!!

When this boss fired me (in part because she threw a 500 degree pan fresh out of the oven at my feet when she got pissed at me and was embarrassed, in part because I offended BooBooSeepyhead) she said "I hate to fire you, because you did such a good job and you really worked hard." I said "Ah, yes, but that never matters in this town, only politics matter."

The kicker was, I had just helped her get this great review in the Tennessean, had made almost every plate they photographed. I made her biz run more smoothly and rapidly than it ever had.

Owner had promised me that I and BooBoo were going to trade places to teach him a lesson, since this 6 foot, 200 lb. 30 something kid let me, the 5 foot 100 pound 52-year-old, do all the work. Well, she was expecting some folks from the New York Times in town for some big wedding so she said she would wait for us to trade places til after that. Okay. Kid is lazy and useless, but his diddy has $$$$. And he ain't gonna impress nobody cuz he's slow as f**k. I get it.

The idiot fires me RIGHT BEFORE the NYT people come! What a doofus! I'd talked another friend into working there, front of the house, and she promised to call me afterward. I really wanted to pull my car up in the parking lot and just watch the disaster.

Sure enough, my friend calls me the next day laughing hysterically. She said it was a complete clusterf**ck. People walked out without getting food, people were late to a function they needed to attend; in short, the NYT people were very NOT impressed.

I mean, talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face!

She did pay me my quarterly bonus, but owner has just informed my friend - who has loaned Owner all sorts of her own restaurant equipment and helped her organize her place like you wouldn't believe (this gal and I have worked side-by-side for years at various places and need to open our own place when she gets out of school) that she doesn't deserve her bonus since she was in college and couldn't work every night. WTF???? Owner seemed able to accomodate the rich University kids, but not my friend? Owner's still got all my friends stuff, still using it, and now stiffs her out of a bonus that girl earned cuz my friend works her ass off.

Rich people got no ethics, man. None.

Thanks for sharing your story and letting me share mine....

[ellisonz]

6. Asshole

[Douglas Carpenter]

7. this is all based on a very simple worldview that they think is obvious truth.

We all do know people who are very irresponsible and thus get themselves into desperate financial situations. Many drug addicts or alcoholics do fit into that category. There are other people who just won't grow up and cannot hold down a job for any length of time because they are constantly screwing up. The same frame of mind looks at examples of people who trumped over economic adversity and assumes that everyone can do the same. What they cannot admit to - because it challenger their whole worldview - is that most poor people do in fact work and most of those do not work are simply not employable. What is even harder for them to face is the obvious reality that our economy as it is currently construed cannot function without a large labor supply of people working full time to earn poverty - and an even larger supply of people living on the edge very close to poverty who will fall into it the minute any disruption to their income occurs. This is structurally built into the system. If it wasn't - then they should have no problem doubling minimum wage and requiring month long vacations for all workers. But they would say - and not all together incorrectly that such moves would harm the economy. Well, if done all at once - it probably would. The system is absolutely dependent on a cheap labor supply - both foreign and domestic. Remove that dependency on cheap labor - the system crashes. Because the system structurally requires close to half the working population to either work for poverty or to work at an income level so much on the edge that any disruption will plunge them and their families into poverty. Poverty exist for a number of reasons. Here in the wealthiest society the world has ever known it exist because it has to. The system as currently constructed cannot survive without it. Food Stamps, Head Start and other such acts of state sponsored charity are the subsidize for a poverty dependent system.

The worldview that says it is all the fault of the poor that they are poor is in a sense the necessary worldview for those who cannot admit that there is something fundamentally wrong.