After a long stretch of writing humor columns on non-political topics, Washington Post humorist Gene Weingarten returned to liberal flatulence in Sunday’s Washington Post Magazine. He was upset that conservatives in state legislatures were attaching restrictions to what food-stamp debit cards can buy. He joked this was conservatives running a “nanny state” regime: “Welcome to benign socialism, guys.”
Here are some of the things that state legislatures are considering putting off limits, or already have done so: strip clubs, psychics, cruise ships, potato chips, moon pies, tattoos, casinos, steaks, lobsters, lingerie, swimming pool memberships, energy drinks, concert tickets, video arcades, sex shops, body piercing parlors, racetracks, nail salons, massage parlors and theme parks. (Guns, though, are generally okay.)
According to the National Conference of State Legislatures, 27 states have these kind of restrictions on the welfare program – Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) – even blue states like Maryland and Massachusetts. The principle is simple: if you’re truly needy, you should be spending your welfare money on needs. No one needs tattoos, piercing, massages, video arcades, and concerts to live.
And guns, Mr. Weingarten? Colorado, Indiana, and Massachusetts ban those purchases, too.
Weingarten thinks this operates just as conservatives always do: on “absurdly condescending” and “ignorant” stereotypes. He even insists they are “baseless.”
Proponents contend that these restrictions are merely gently encouraging people to live better, healthier, more intelligently frugal lives. Opponents charge that they are absurdly condescending and that their only purpose is to shame and infantilize and punish the poor, who, in the minds of conservative politicians, all seem to be credulous, unsophisticated, grease-gobbling, craps-playing, self-pampering, sex-crazed deviant wastrels with tongue studs and tattoos (probably misspelled).
Let’s think this through. If you’re fine with government attempting to regulate poor people’s behavior based on ignorant and baseless stereotypes, then you’d probably be fine with these, too: passing laws specifically prohibiting Jewish people from lending money at usurious rates, or black people from rioting, or Hispanics from having more than 15 people share a bedroom, or gay people from having public orgies, or, say, requiring Asians to get extra driving lessons before they can get their licenses.
You might be a liberal if you can’t discuss government benefits without launching it into broad-brush accusations of racism, anti-Semitism, and homophobia.
The “humor” in Weingarten’s column is then suggested in a long list of ways the salaries of politicians should be restricted based on stereotypes about their lives, such as:
All costs related to your spectacularly messy and vicious divorces, ending loveless, sham political marriages to persons with frozen smiles who thought they wanted power and prestige and influence but became just another lonely, tired-eyed, helmet-haired, blond photo op for an ambitious, heartless, empty suit.
Politicians, whether you like them or not, are actually working for their pay, unlike recipients of food stamps and welfare. But this might be funny...if you’re a liberal Washington Post subscriber.
