Monday October 10, 2011

A STEADY DIET OF BULLSHIT. Let's play a game: see if you can figure out whether  Julie Gunlock was forced by her employers to write this horrible thing for National Review, or whether she burst into K-Lo's office juiced to rip the lid off the lefty plot to frighten kids with some junk about children going hungry:

Although Lily is just the latest politically charged plot to come out of Sesame Street...

From this toss-off, I judge the rightwing notion that Sesame Street, known to most of us as promoters of good citizenship and basic education, is actually a communist propaganda mill has been fully adopted by the Central Committee.

...the problem with this storyline is that it is absolutely false. In fact, Lily’s lucky to be “poor” in this country.

Paf! Just because the new Muppet isn't getting enough "food" to "eat" doesn't make her poor but only "poor," which translates from rightspeak to "I know all you homeless fakers are luxuriating in Starbucks bathrooms and eating garbage paid for by my tax dollars, and I resent the hell out of it as I fart through silk and stuff my fat maw."

The truth is, 94.3 percent of American households are able to put enough food on the table every day to feed their families. And despite the grim “facts” and figures thrown around by children’s television programs, celebrity spokespersons, and the mainstream media, the vast majority of children living in America are healthy and well fed.

Leaving only, what, about 15 million hungry? That's not so much and Gunlock sure doesn't know any of them. Plus there's that whole loaded term "hungry":

In fact, American kids have it pretty good. As I wrote on NRO back in January, the idiom “food insecure” — a term created by the U.S. Department of Agriculture — means one has either “reduced quality, variety, or desirability of diet” or “disrupted eating patterns and reduced food intake.”

So, far from hungry or starving, Lily suffers from a much less dramatic condition — unpleasant to be sure, but at its core, just a somewhat boring, irregular, and occasionally reduced diet.

Similarly, people who are being waterboarded merely experience occasionally reduced breathing.

I guess there's no game here at all, really. A lingering faith in human nature is all that kept me hoping that Gunlock heaved a big sigh, looked at the desktop photo of the aged, infirm mother her paycheck was supporting, and forced herself to write this literally monstrous piece. In reality there are enough soulless humanoids who would scamper with  glee at the prospect of this assignment to fill several think tanks. Who knows, maybe one day Gunlock will be the business and economics editor of The Atlantic, assuming she hasn't been dragged off in a tumbrel before then. [h/t Kia.]