I'm Not Taking Sides Here

I just read this article at The Washington Post about the Congressional stunt of living off of food stamps for a week. The author has decided that it is possible to live off of such a budget, and shows how she did it. While her diet wouldn't do very much for me (I've eaten bean, rice, and grains diets. They usually leave me hungry, wanting something far more substantial.), something far more upsetting struck me about her argument. Her article reeked of something that The Washington Post has been awash in recently: classism.

The article is saying that if you can't live off of 120 dollars/week, you're pretty much an idiot. I know I can live off of 120 dollars a week, but I'm single and I have a lot of spare time to soak beans for a day then cook them for hours over low heat. I also know that if I applied for food stamps, that total is going to be a lot lower.

But, I also don't have three other hungry mouths to feed with each meal and other costs that may come up such as covering the phone bill or making sure that my kids have clothes for school, regardless of whether they come from a department store or a thrift store. The sheer disregard of the reality of being poor in this article is amazing, and just feeds into the constant reinforcement of the classism that has come into view in recent months at the paper.

I'm really getting fed up with writers of The Post sticking up their nose at so many different parts of the Washington community with such insulting pieces like this and the one about the concert violinist playing in the train system. I don't know a lot about classical music. Last time I checked, that wasn't really a crime. Get the sticks out of your asses, Post.