Homeless Got Cell Phones!?!?
You might think that a massive economic crisis with skyrocketing foreclosures and job losses would make people sympathetic to the plight of the poor and homeless. Well, maybe it makes some people sympathetic. Suckers, maybe -- not conservatives!
Andrew Malcolm, conservative nitwit and constant embarrassment to his employers at the LA Times, was looking at coverage of Michelle Obama's Thursday volunteer stint at a DC soup kitchen, and noticed an AP photo of one of the people in line snapping the First Lady's photo with his cell phone.
Outraged yet? If not, perhaps that's because you've actually been in a soup kitchen or shelter sometime in the past 20 years. And you've probably become inured to how amazing it is that HOMELESS GOT CELL PHONES!?!?
Malcolm ponders:
If this unidentified meal recipient is too poor to buy his own food, how does he afford a cellphone?
And if he is homeless, where do they send the cellphone bills?
Yeah, homeless guy! Riddle me that!
When I first saw Malcolm's post earlier today, I brushed it off -- I can't mock every stupid thing I read, you know -- figuring that somebody would quickly point out the answers and he would post some sort of update about how it's not such a big mystery or oddity after all, and that would be the end of it.
But I'm afraid I underestimated the unthinking, knee-jerk, mean-spiritedness of our contemporary right-wing media.
Here's National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez opining that Homeless-Got-Cell-Phones guy illustrates once again that "America has the wealthiest poor people in the world." Here's Michelle Malkin chortling over Homeless-Got-Cell-Phones guy "ruining what was supposed to be a sob story photo op of the compassionate Mrs. O catering to the downtrodden." And needless to say, it has spread from there to dozens of bloggers on down the conservative food chain. No update so far from Malcolm.