The undeserving poor
An exchange in the comments section of this post made me think of one of my favorite scenes from “My Fair Lady.” It’s a discourse on the welfare system by Eliza’s ne-er-do-well father, Alfred Doolittle:
Here it is:
And here’s the same speech, in the earlier movie rendition of its original appearance in “My Fair Lady’s” prototype “Pygmalion’:
[ADDENDUM: Leslie Howard, who played Higgins in the movie “Pygmalion,” led a relatively short but interesting life. Among other things, he was what used to be called a “ladies’ man,” and once said that he “didn’t chase women but ”¦ couldn’t always be bothered to run away.”)
Neo–
Yes, bet on my screen “here it is” is followed by a void, no speech text, no links to the alternatve movie version.
These are the questions aren’t they? Who, exactly, are the “deserving,” and what is “poor.”
Say, for instance, someone who–through no fault of their own– has a congenital defect, a major illness or injury, and is truly, permanently disabled, so that they cannot hold any job–I’d say that they were deserving of some help, likely a lot of help from the government.
Then, what about those who are “disabled” but to a lesser degree–say, they can no longer lift heavy objects but can do less physically taxing work, or their vision has deteriorated and they can no longer do the work they had been doing which required very acute vision–say watch repair, but they could hold some other type of job. Should we say to that person, life is not fair and just “suck it up,” or should we say, “forget about trying to find and do what may be a low level job,” here is some government cheese, or do we take some intermediate position?
How about people who may be disabled to one degree or another but who have brought their physical or mental “disability” upon themselves by making bad choices–drinking and drugging, drag racing down a public street and getting injured, having a psychiatric condition but refusing to take their medications?
What about those whose “disability” is that they quit school and never got even a basic education and/or simply don’t have the right attitude or work ethic, and are unwilling to do the things that are necessary to get and hold a job; like bathe and shave and show up, dress decently, and keep a civil tongue in their mouths? What kind of help should we give them?
What about those who are poor because they just refuse to work? Are they deserving?
Then, there is the question of what is “poor.” It used to be that “poor” meant that you did not have sufficient food, clothing, and shelter to live a decent, if marginal, life. Now, Obama & Co. have expanded the definition of “poor,” by saying that we should really be defining poverty in terms of “relative poverty” (thus, leading to their recent claim that 43 million Americans are “living in poverty,” a national disgrace obviously requiring that Obama & Co. must be voted in for another term to continue their valiant efforts to fight this horrible scourge) i.e. if you have fewer or less fine clothes, cars, TVs, or computers, live in a smaller, more utilitarian house than someone else, then, you are “poor” compared to them.
And for those who we decide are both “deserving and “poor,” how much aid should we give them? Pay for everything, pay for some of their expenses? How about child care? How about transportation?
I understand that now, in some jurisdictions, the poor are being given hundreds of dollars per year to help them maintain a car (boy, I wish I could get a subsidy like that!), or cell phones because they are supposedly now a necessity. All such “help” is really a “transfer payment,” which extracts money from the assets of working/productive people to be “transferred” i.e. given to those who are less productive or not productive at all, and who do not work.
We are sliding at an ever increasing rate towards the Communist ideal of “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need,” and those from whom the money is extracted have no say in deciding who needs help and how much.
Moreover, the welfare establishment–the cadre of social workers, academics, NGOs, advocacy organizations, government bureaucrats and administrators who advocate for and administer these programs–are getting rich off of their roles of administering this “help.”
These various social welfare programs have grown into out of control, and become voracious, budget devouring nightmares, more scam than anything else now, rather than legitimate programs to help the truly needy, and they need to be drastically reformed and scaled down.
My view is that people should be responsible for themselves and their own actions–and the consequences of those actions–and that we should go back to the old model, where they looked to themselves, to their families, and to their religious and other local civic institutions for aid, rather than to the government i.e. taxes confiscated from other citizens–for their needs.
Rant off.
I’m comfortable with the concept of the deserving poor. This discernment used to be very common when aid was given at a very low level (e.g. church groups, etc). with the government supplying most of the money, there needs to be “fair standards” (whatever that means) to prevent abuse.
However, one commenter on a post on alternet (a very progressive place) asked ‘what about those who have no friends or family to rely on’? I thought that a good question – perhaps there should be some very basic survival aid, but that otherwise, the community should step in.
The problem with the government making these decisions and providing the funding is that they are incapable of discerning who is needy and who is fraudulent. Or how much help will benefit a deserving poor person and how much help will prostitute them and make them lifelong dependents. The net result is in a country of 300 million we have over 50 million “deserving poor” and the number is growing constantly. How many of these people did our welfare system create? How many of these people would have been so much better off if they had been allowed to fail and find the ability within themselves to turn their life around. Most of us are happy and fulfilled knowing we can support ourselves, make and keep a family budget, provide for our family, etc. Welfare robs people of the opportunity to live a good and productive life. Welfare also robs the rest of us of about $1.2 trillion a year of our hard earned money.
Those who through no fault of their own can not support themselves obviously need assistance. Family, friends, and local charities are the first responders. All decisions about charity should be made within the local community; not by state or federal governments.
When I was a little kid there were county poor houses. The poor grew and preserved some of their own food, they collected trash, cut the weeds and grass along roadways, and sometimes local farmers and businesses would hire them to help with seasonal chores. As far as I am aware poor houses no longer exist.
“The net result is in a country of 300 million we have over 50 million “deserving poor” and the number is growing constantly. How many of these people did our welfare system create?”
Many were created by the welfare state, we know this is true because we now have 3 generations in the same family living on welfare. This is a circle that can only be broken by ending the federal-state welfare system.
The hidiots (hideous idiots) attack America by demanding America deny its patriotism, morality, and goodness.
“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality, and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”
Josef Stalin. (He knew from personal experience that he was an unhealthy body. If one is already destroyed, what does that person seek? Undeserved welfare is probably the most morale destroying event there is.)
http://tmq2.wordpress.com/2007/05/12/stalin-and-his-13-year-old-lover/
Everyone always mentions that he was that “man with the burning eyes”.
C’mon. You read it. You did.
Neo-cons, like the disgusting Michael Bloomberg demand cheap foreign labor, who taxpayers must subsidize, so scum like Bloomberg, and his cronies can pay them less. This is the same Bloomberg who is selling the US out, to his Arab paymasters, who after he helped serve up ground zero to the Islamists was allowed to open the new world headquarters for Bloomberg, in Dubai.
I’d like to state in my not so humble opinion, the US taxpayers, working poor and middle class for decades have had their hard earned money stolen from them, and given away, at the demand of democrats and their neo-con pals, Trotskyites, Marxists just like the democrats, to wealthy foreign despots, and wealthy foreign interests, who we were told were the deserving poor, more deserving than poor US citizens, who those neo-cons didn’t give a damn about. Henry Kissenger demanded the US fund all sorts of foreign nations, pay their way, buy their weapons for them, subsidize their people, while ours got the shaft. Amazing isn’t it.. the neo-cons demand one world government, and seek to destroy the US’s economic independence. I say those foreign interests are undeserving, I say if neo-cons want to fund foreign entities, governments and interests, they shoiuld fund them out of their own pockets. In fact, if they love those foreign countries so much, and have such contempt for the US citizenry, they should leave, and move to those foreign countries, and put their backsides on the line for those foreign countries, instead of putting the lives of young Americans on the line. The US would have been better off, if those neo-cons were never allowed to infiltrate the republican party.
PU.
All the money, Mary, you are missing, is a drop in the bucket compared to the war on poverty.
I’ll bet you don’t like Israel very much, huh? Yeah, kind of a a guess.
The American people got the shaft? You fool. Compared to whom? All the Muslim countries in revolt because there’s not enough food? Or Great Britain with enough love of foreigners that they have invited them to take over their country?
And who stole what from whom? It’s not taxes but inflation which is stealing money from the working poor. Shiza. Educate yourself and get a grip.
Curtis,
Mary is the diminutive of Thyroid Mary. Best stay away. Its communicative.
Wolla Dalbo,
I used to be more torn, but I have come around to being very much a non-interventionist. To be honest, that is what I think family and then charity is for, not government. This, as I live on military disability (they initially (for 22 years) thought it was depression, or whatever fad diagnosis was going around, only to find that it was merely extreme heart failure). So I am compensated. If too I think the military disability is a different thing, a benefit for low pay and long hours. Of course, that does give me a tainted view of psychiatry and “taking you damn meds, because you need them”. Prozac was never going to fix my heart. If I, I hope, am an outlier.
It isn’t because I am cruel that I want the government out of charity, but because it has never worked, it doesn’t do a good job managing real need or separating that from want, the number of “disabled” have simply grown on the program, among a dozen other reasons. As jobs have disappeared, disability claims have soared, for example, meaning that if the “disabled” can work they will, and if they have no other choice, they most certainly will. The government is turning everyone into the disabled. Even in schools, one large segment of government funding is for kids who will never be functional. Something in there might make sense, if that is only part of it.
1) I’ve always been of the opinion that MFL sucks. BIG time.
a) It’s just horribly miscast. Hepburn as Eliza? Who the eph can
possibly look at her and NOT see the beauty therein? It’s
preposterous. There’s a reason why every gay man wants to be Audrey Hepburn. She was gorgeous even
when she was sixty. Wendy Hiller was perfect as Eliza, though
— she “cleaned up well”. And Harrison, well, Harrison played Higgins as a
cold, emotionless fish. Higgins is NOT a cold fish, he’s a VERY
passionate man who has subsumed his passions into his love of language. With
time and subtlety, those same passions get shifted to Eliza. And Howard, by
contrast, shows exactly that, from the moment you see him in Covent Garden,
enthusiastically fascinated with the speaking voices of the people around him,
especially those with the slightest hint of the exotic. All the rest of the
casting of MFL is awful, too — all the way down to minor parts like Eliza’s
father and Freddy, even more so when compared to those in the original film.
b) It’s an almost undebatable fact that Shaw is the second greatest English
playwright of all time. To take his words and intersperse them with music and
such is to destroy the inherent cadences and rhythms he set up§. Just as
there are some films which ought not to be colorized (“Suspicion” comes to
mind, and [*sigh*] yes, it’s been colorized), as the directors were talented
enough to USE the interplay of light and shadow that B&W gave a picture, so,
too, is the notion of taking Shaw’s work and making a musical out of it. The
result is going to be inherently poorer than Shaw’s brilliance.
I’m told that, in the 1600s, there was a mediocre artist who was being hired by
the churches to paint loincloths on formerly nude figures in various classic
paintings on cathedral walls. THIS man, painting loincloths on the works of
Michelangelo and Da Vinci, is sort of like those who would set Pygmalion
to music.
So I highly recommend the original Pygmalion, while I openly detest MFL.
If you want a great musical from that era, go with The Music Man.
BTW, if you do see Pygmalion and like it (as with many classic films, it
requires some acclimation to the slower pre-MTV pacing of almost any films from
before about 1985), I also recommend Howard in “The Scarlet
Pimpernel”
=============
§ P.S., you could make similar comments about West Side Story, and, in
fact, I think those are valid — but at least the vernacular and the speaking
cadences of modern times compared to 1600 or so is such that one doesn’t FEEL
all the power of Shakespeare’s work unless you’ve become an expert in Early
Modern English. The same cannot be said of Shaw… while terminologies and such
have changed, expanded, and slangs come and gone, the underlying style of speech
hasn’t been affected much at all since the early 1900s when Pygmalion was
written.
Ahem. Sorry.
I’ve always been of the opinion that MFL sucks. BIG time.
a) It’s just horribly miscast. Hepburn as Eliza? Who the eph can possibly look at her and NOT see the beauty therein? It’s preposterous. There’s a reason why every gay man wants to be Audrey Hepburn. She was gorgeous even when she was sixty. Wendy Hiller was perfect as Eliza, though — she “cleaned up well”. And Harrison, well, Harrison played Higgins as a cold, emotionless fish. Higgins is NOT a cold fish, he’s a VERY passionate man who has subsumed his passions into his love of language. With time and subtlety, those same passions get shifted to Eliza. And Howard, by contrast, shows exactly that, from the moment you see him in Covent Garden, enthusiastically fascinated with the speaking voices of the people around him, especially those with the slightest hint of the exotic. All the rest of the casting of MFL is awful, too — all the way down to minor parts like Eliza’s father and Freddy, even more so when compared to those in the original film.
b) It’s an almost undebatable fact that Shaw is the second greatest English playwright of all time. To take his words and intersperse them with music and such is to destroy the inherent cadences and rhythms he set up§. Just as there are some films which ought not to be colorized (“Suspicion” comes to mind, and [*sigh*] yes, it’s been colorized), as the directors were talented enough to USE the interplay of light and shadow that B&W gave a picture, so, too, is the notion of taking Shaw’s work and making a musical out of it. The result is going to be inherently poorer than Shaw’s brilliance.
I’m told that, in the 1600s, there was a mediocre artist who was being hired by the churches to paint loincloths on formerly nude figures in various classic paintings on cathedral walls. THIS man, painting loincloths on the works of Michelangelo and Da Vinci, is sort of like those who would set Pygmalion to music.
So I highly recommend the original Pygmalion, while I openly detest MFL. If you want a great musical from that era, go with The Music Man.
BTW, if you do see Pygmalion and like it (as with many classic films, it requires some acclimation to the slower pre-MTV pacing of almost any films from before about 1985), I also recommend Howard in “The Scarlet Pimpernel”
=============
§ P.S., you could make similar comments about West Side Story, and, in fact, I think those are valid — but at least the vernacular and the speaking cadences of modern times compared to 1600 or so is such that one doesn’t FEEL all the power of Shakespeare’s work unless you’ve become an expert in Early Modern English. The same cannot be said of Shaw… while terminologies and such have changed, expanded, and slangs come and gone, the underlying style of speech hasn’t been affected much at all since the early 1900s when Pygmalion was written.
>>> the neo-cons demand one world government, and seek to destroy the US’s economic independence.
If it weren’t obvious that Mary is either a troll or totally mental, this comment more than amply demonstrates it.
“Sir, I admit your general rule,
That every poet is a fool.
But you yourself may serve to show it,
Every fool is not a poet.”
–Alexander Pope
The idea that neocons — cons of any variety, seek “one world government” is so laughably clueless as to cause the hiccups.
Most cons of every sort have long believed that the USA has little to no purpose in the UN any more, it having become a place of self-flagellation for American ambassadors. Some argue that the UN might be salvaged, but most realize it’s beyond any hope.
The same goes true for pretty much every aspect of economic power, for which even the worst cons push for Mercantilism in place of Free Trade, which is hardly an abandonment of US economic independence.
IGotBupkis: I think Hiller is much superior to Hepburn (whom I agree was dreadfully miscast, and yet transcends that fact and is, as always, completely charming). Also, the dialogue in “Pygmalion” (much of which was reproduced in “My Fair Lady”) is crisper and better-delivered.
However, I disagree with you on other points. For example, Stanley Holloway is a big favorite of mine as Alfred Doolittle, both in the play and the movie. I very much like both Leslie Howard and Rex Harrison’s portrayals of Higgins, which are completely different from each other, in much the ways you describe (Howard more sensitive, Higgins gruff and overbearing) —as different as the musical is from the play. One of the biggest differences was the happy-fill-in-the-blanks ending of MFL vs. the more realistic-downer ending of the stage play, although the filmed “Pygmalion” was the originator of the “happier” ending “My Fair Lady” featured, which was inserted in the film against Shaw’s wishes (see this).
The film “Pygmalion” had the added plus of Shaw’s having adapted his play for the screen, and even writing new dialogue and scenes for it.
I see MFL and Pygmalion, musical and play, as different creatures to be judged by different criteria. Both of them are excellent and extremely enjoyable, as well as witty. As for “Romeo and Juliet” and “West Side Story,” I’d say something similar—multiplied by a factor of 100 for how different they are from each other. And of course the word “enjoyable” isn’t quite as appropriate, since they are both tragic. I adore them both, however, in completely different ways; they are very different genres, and feature substantially different stories, although the first was the inspiration for the second.
IGotBupkis: to paraphrase Barack Obama, the word neocon serves “as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their views.”
Mary defines “neocon” as whatever it is she’s eager to hate.
I’ve had these talks with leftists before and you’re hitting the nail on the head… sort of.
The reason they want the government in charge of welfare is to keep us out of it (and/or the decision making). I’ve been told this straight up a couple times by different lefties.
We are to pay up but then be attacked if we ask about where it is going.
Lefties know people wouldn’t starve without welfare (private groups would move in). They just don’t want the private groups involved or their standards applied.
It’s the same thing with healthcare. All the crying about the people who go without due to the private insurance system went out the window when the left thought they won. Well, if the ‘science’ says it is an unnecessary procedure ‘we the left’ will deny even more (to more) people who need care. Science being BS for whatever the left wants us to have (at the moment).
“neo-con … Trotskyites”
You left out “hook-nosed cosmopolitan Zionist wire-pullers”
About MFL and Hepburn – “wouldn’t it be loverly” if she had been able to sing? I automatically dislike movie musicals which feel the need to separate face from voice. The best lip-syncer is no good.
Wendy Hiller is superb. For another movie that shows her talents in their best light, check out “I Know Where I’m Going”, a quirky, delightful flick.
Thomas, I think that is very true. And it’s also only a superficial shallow glimpse at the Left’s true machinations and plans. They have far more serious things going on. Fast and Furious was only the tip of the iceberg. What people knew because it got found out. Imagine what they have been doing for the last few decades that nobody has found out.
“hook-nosed cosmopolitan Zionist wire-pullers”
Wire-pullers???
The problem is that government can’t do anything for you without doing something to you. That we’re actually in a fight to keep a bigoted punk out of the whitehouse for a second term come November, tells us what that something is.
I think part of the pathology here is the notion, and now the expectation that has been fostered among today’s young people, that “everyone is a winner” in life, and that virtually everyone should go to college, and the disdain for essential, but low level and/or blue collar jobs, as every student–regardless of education, talent, or innate ability–has been given the notion, by today’s “educators” and our current culture, that they can be a big time Executive, or Academic, Scientist, or Rap music mogul, keep their hands clean, and have all the perks of success–often with the added notion–expressed by the barely literate high school kids you often see quizzed on local TV about “what they want to do when they grow up”–that they “don’t want to start at the bottom, in no crappy low level job in the Mailroom,” they want to start at the top, with a big office, big house, flashy car and flashy jewelry, plenty of women, etc. etc.–all the stuff they see on TV and in Rap videos.
Thus, there is set up the situation that many people will fail to get what they have been promised are their right and just deserts and with that failure comes bitterness, despair, and anger.
Thus, the idea of assessing people’s aptitudes, interests and abilities and putting them on different tracks in their education —the smaller percentage with the requisite, I.Q., talent, and desire onto an academic or scientific track and college, the larger group onto a practical applications track–going to various trade schools to learn the skills necessary to become office and factory workers, repairmen, mechanics, plumbers, clerks–had been discarded as being racist and discriminatory, and I think that we all see the results of this decision in our everyday lives.
P.S.-Not, I suspect, just coincidentally, this deliberately created sense of dissatisfaction, despair, and anger among young high school and college age males–the age/sex cohort responsible for the majority of violence in societies–can be very useful in fomenting turmoil, political change, and/or revolution.
It has been many years since I have seen either the Hepburn or Hiller versions, but I recall liking both very much. My opinion is a smattering of the others.
I always assumed MFL was dubbed for the singing voice doesn’t match the speaking voice. But I don’t think Hepburn was miscast precisely because it is impossible to not see the beauty within and precisely because she wasn’t the best of singers. Here we have a cockney street vendor bursting into beautiful song. Doesn’t make sense to me. You’d almost expect Harrision to blurt out, “Girl, can’t you speak more like you sing?”
I actually am charmed by Hepburn’s own voice. Was there anyone in that picture besides Hepburn? Oh, and I’m not gay, definitely not gay.
Agreed. I Know Where I’m Going is delightful.
Possible Factoid. In a scene in Charade, Grant and Hepburn get off the elevator at her flat and he seems to ad lib something like, “Here we are, on the street where you live.”
Suspicion has been colorized? I’ll leave you now to cry myself to sleep.