One more fucking post about Rolling Stone and the Boston Bomber

If you partake in almost any media these days, you've seen it, so I don't really need to repost Dzhokhar Tsarnaev on the cover of Rolling Stone.  I've had a pretty "I don't care" attitude about it and have ignored most of the controversy (except to hit 'like' on the Facebook post of a friend who also didn't care).

Then, someone wrote a well thought out essay about just why the cover of Rolling Stone is about musical achievement--more thought out than the sound bites the news has been blasting, and deserving of more than "Whatever.  Shut up."  I'd known already (as anyone who spends as much time on the internet and watching TV as I do knows) that Charles Manson was once on the cover.  After a quick Google search, I replied to that essay with:

One recent cover was a photo of Snooki riding a rocket a la Dr. Strangelove.  It [past covers] has included pictures of writers, athletes, presidents, victims of tragedies, fictional characters, Charles Manson, and somebody's lesbian ex-girlfriend.  Their problem is that they *mean* to be a magazine about American culture, but with their high emphasis on musicians they're *perceived* as a magazine about music.

I could have left it there, but something about this story makes me want to be one of those people that I hate. I hate, hate, hate it when you're discussing an issue and someone says, "Why are we talking about this when the economy isn't fixed?"  Well, because, asshole, nothing will be added to the work force by everyone everywhere walking around muttering "recession"  "shrinking middle class" "fucking banks!" like we've been struck with mass Tourette's Syndrome.  We can think about social justice, healing the political rift in our country, and talking our government to task about children in far off lands being destroyed by "out" drone strikes and still give a damn about the economy.

We can talk about the cover of Rolling Stone and....

Well, maybe not.

The two big criticisms about the cover are: 1) Rolling Stone celebrates musical heroes, so having Tsarnaev on the cover (looking all young and cool) is glamorizing a terrorist and 2) Rolling Stone is re-traumatizing the people of Boston for money.

...There's a part of me that I squash each time I see the Rolling Stone cover-the same part of me I've squashed since the first non-grainy picture of the younger Boston Bomber hit the air all those months ago.  It's the part that recognizes the uncomfortable truth: He's kinda cute.  Other than using the bloody pictures of the teen posted by the bitter state police sergeant in response to the cover, there's not much the magazine could do to change that reaction.  Tsarnaev's pics show him as either young and almost cherubic or young and sort of sultry.  It's just his face.  And in the context of the magazine, that's sort of important as the caption reads: The Bomber  How a Popular, Promising Student Was Failed by His Family, Fell Into Radical Islam and Became a Monster.

We all want to know how that happened.  Just as humans, we've long had a problem reconciling how the evil stranger almost never looks like a bad guy twirling his mustache as he peers out of the shadows with beady, rat-like eyes. And this bad guy is a little too Soviet to be all-American, but he and his late brother are/were half Chechen and half Caucasian Avar--the people all other white people are named after.  He was a kid when the family moved to America and he was a citizen by the time of the bombing.  Everything the news has force-fed me about this guy suggests he was pretty fucking normal, but normal people don't blow up innocent people in their adopted home.  If RS has investigated and has those answers, putting the bomber on the cover is a hell of a lot more important than, say, the story of how Robin Thicke is pretty fly for a white guy (one of the other cover blurbs).

Nothing gives me the right to speak for all Bostonians, much less for those directly harmed by the bombings. Yet, I imagine that those directly harmed feel a prick each time the bomber's face or name comes up. There's a ton of real news that puts his picture out there, but this story has artificially inflated that.  Because of the attention on this cover, no hour of local TV is safe, nor is any amount of time of social media.  The anger is creating the problem it's supposed to be against.

And all this time spent reading, writing, and angsting about the RS cover really IS taking away from actually important things.

Speaking of Trayvon Martin and Martin Luther King Jr.

I can't remember all the people who have been shot in America since Trayvon Martin died on February 26, 2012.  Part of that is because I didn't see them all; most shootings don't make national news.  The Martin case didn't at first, though there are many (babbling in social media) who don't remember that.  Even among the local news, the images are usually of a crime scene, and that coverage doesn't last long.  We see police tape, a lot of officers milling around, and then nothing unless they arrest someone.  

Why am I explaining that?  It's similar to what I think each time some chucklehead asks rhetorically, "What about all the other victims of gun violence?"  Because, you know, we only care about THIS case because the media tells us to.  Or not.  

In the beginning, Trayvon's shooting was as ignored by the media as any other.  The dead kid wasn't a famous rapper.  The shooter wasn't a famous athlete.  But in addition to his parents not accepting that the boy was doing anything that would lead to his death, young people across the internet collectively said, "Wait...what?"  As an adult-returned-to-school, days later I learned of the case in a university class.  In the mixed age group, the same "kids" who were active in the Occupy movement led the discussion.  Unlike in most of those conversations that were held before the academics began, all the "old folks" were completely attentive.  All the mothers--black, white, and Latina--seemed to have the same reaction: that could be my kid. 

Of course, the facts don't back up the feeling.  The white mothers were far less likely to have someone see their child walking down a street, decide they *must* be up to no good, and eventually kill them.  Still, statistics don't matter nearly as much as that gut reaction of sympathy.  Soon many people from diverse backgrounds were googling the local reports, joining social media conversations, and drawing the national media in.

Yeah, I've been known to rant about the media to anyone who would listen in my personal life.  But I want to give a resounding "Fuck you" to anyone who states that those of us who care about what happened to Trayvon do so because the media told us to.

And what the hell does any of that have to do with MLK?  

Martin Luther King Jr. wasn't the first person to fight for Civil Rights.  He spoke (and is paraphrased by the hour since the verdict)  about his dream for all men to be judged by the content of their character rather than the color of their skin, but the burning need behind those words were centuries in the making.  He didn't march on Washington alone.  But King became the stand in, the symbol that encompasses all those who marched and were beaten and jailed but who's names never made it into the text books.  His face became the face of everyone who stood up yet has gone unknown.

And, I would like to tell every asshat who asks why Trayvon is so damned important, is why Trayvon is so damned important.  He was a child killed for no good reason.  As an individual young man, his loss is felt as a tragedy in and of itself, but he also symbolizes every black child who's died because someone though his just walking in his own skin might be a threat.  And don't gt it twisted--we are none of us one thing, and he wasn't only a black boy, but an American child and people of all colors saw in him another of our young lost to gun violence.  

Not everyone has to see it this way.  Not everyone has to care one way or the other.  But the damned questions are not rhetorical, and there are the answers.

Welfare Reform...

I’m at a crossroads in my education where I need to make some choices about where to go next.  When returning to college I chose a field within the Humanities that I was truly passionate about, but it’s one of those areas that enriches you greatly as a person without giving a clear direction of where to take it.  Invited to apply for a graduate program in politics, I seriously considered it for a minute.  It’s not for me for various reasons, including the fact that I wouldn't be able to say that some people suck.

When Geoff Diehl (R-Whitman)’s “17 Reasons to Reform Welfare” showed up on my Facebook feed, I felt the need to discuss some of the suckness™.

1. Earlier this year the Inspector General released a report detailing over $25 million in abuse.

That’s straight forward; $25 mill in abuse should be addressed.  No suckness here.

2. 9800 EBT recipients got 10 or more replacement cards.

So?  This goes for 3,5, 9, and 16—random pieces of information that mean pretty close to nothing.  Are we supposed to be mad that these little pieces of plastic, which probably cost a few cents each, are made in greater batches than necessary to keep a stock of replacements?  Or is the problem that those horrible welfare recipients are proving just how irresponsible they are? 

4. The Patrick Administration had to spend $3.5 million for overtime for DTA workers in order to fix their records.

Ahah!  Something we can talk about.  The state shouldn't have to pay an extra $3.5 mill for people to do their job right.  This has absolutely nothing to do with welfare reform, but it’s still a waste of money and something should be done about training and oversight of state workers.

6. $2.4 million in welfare benefits went to dead people.

The fact alone doesn't impress me much.  It doesn't tell us how much is fraud—someone actively taking on the identity of a dead person to scam the system—versus how much is individuals dying and, with no notification to case workers, continue to receive benefits.  The latter is a non-issue.  Without someone having their card and knowing their password, the money just sits there and should be retrievable when it is discovered that they're dead.

7. 47,000 welfare applicants and recipients had bad addresses. 19,000 are stilling missing.

Again, so?  To get welfare, applicants have to prove their need.  I don’t care if they moved without notification or even lied about their address.  At a certain point, benefits run out and the recipient has to prove their need and jump through other hoops (job training/adult day care, etc) to get anything more.  So 19,000 people will eventually either come forward or lapse off the dole.

8. No one has yet to be fined for purchasing alcohol, tobacco or lottery tickets with their EBT card.

We must punish the naughty!  At last, a reason that has some (dubious) merit!  If we give some of our tax dollars so that you have woefully insufficient money to pay your bill(s), we damn well demand that you only pay your bill(s). 

Of course, there’s a flip side.  Welfare consists of “food stamp” money-money on the EBT card that can only be used for food; if you need dish washing liquid or toilet paper and that’s all you have, you’re shit out of luck—and cash assistance for your bills that isn’t enough for any adult, let alone a family, to really pay bills.  So you pay for electrify and have to hope that you pay for enough of the heat bill to get to the point in the winter where they can’t shut it off.  Of course if you don’t have some way of paying rent, none of that will matter.  Maybe you and your kids are crashing on your Mom’s living room floor, but you’re probably one of the working poor.  You have a job or two, but you can’t make ends meet.  And the Republicans want you to pay a fine now on top of everything else for having a vice.  Yeah, that’ll help.

10. 85% of the cash assistance is taken out in cash.

This is why rich people shouldn't make rules for the poor.  When Geoff Diehl needs to pay his electric bill, he or his wife probably pulls out their check book.  Maybe they’re forward thinking and pay all their bills online.  Perhaps he thinks cash assistance magically jumps from an EBT card to a check book or credit card (also magically providing the computer and internet access because, unless you've just become poor, you don’t have either).  People with real thoughts realize that you have to take the money out and get a money order or go to one of the places that will allow you to pay in cash.

I’m tempted to stop ranting here, but there are two more of significance:

13. $27 million were used outside of Massachusetts. $4.5 million was spent in Florida, the Virgin Islands, and Hawaii.

Here we finally have a real argument for reforming welfare.  Sort of.  If you can afford to go to Florida, the Virgin Islands, and/or Hawaii and you’re on welfare, you’re scamming the system and you should be stopped/fined.  I think it’s interesting that $27 mil were spent outside of the state but only $4.5 mill in exotic locales.  Could it be that the rest of the money was spent by people who live on the border and prefer to do their shopping where they can get more for a buck—ie, people who are doing nothing wrong?

14. The Boston Marathon bombers collected welfare

This, at best, is random trivia.  At worst, it’s the ultimate in suck.  The fact that these people once collected welfare tells us that they were once poor enough to qualify.  It tells us nothing about welfare.  Just stating the fact and leaving it floating there near the end of his reasons subliminally suggests that other people on welfare are potentially dangerous and should be punished. 

The powers that be (legislators, case workers) should absolutely get at the root of fraud and put an end to it.  Spending Massachusetts EBT money in Maui?  Without proof that your Hawaiian grandmother died and your rich aunt sent you to the funeral, you should pay fines and maybe even have some jail time.  But most of these arguments are crap.

*I said “so what” to the amount of cards replaced because that doesn't affect the amount one receives.  Maybe the recipient is trading the cards for cocaine and we can’t have that.  But maybe they’re living off Ramen noodles and trading the food stamps for rent money.  That’s called survival and shouldn't be punished.