“I Feel Uncomfortable With Their Dirtiness”
Well, maybe “they” feel uncomfortable with your fuzzy cardigan sweaters and Saltwater sandals!
Or maybe that’s just me. Maybe I feel uncomfortable with the fact that grown women regularly wear children’s sandals!
Anyway.
The Wall Street Journal recently published a Brooklyn woman’s dirty little secret. Get this. “Panhandlers make [her] crazy.”
Anne Kadet doesn’t like that she relates so much to Marie Antoinette, but she just doesn’t understand why she should give money to people who might turn right around and use that money to buy alcohol. Or all the illegal drugs she’s heard so much about. Or soda. She feels justified in this! Her friends don’t like to give money to dirty homeless people either. She even quotes Mary Brosnahan who is the executive director of the Coalition for the Homeless—I’m just going to repeat this: THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS—as saying, “I’m working so hard! Why can’t [they] do the same?”
Which, wow. Okay! So even people who ostensibly understand that the root causes of homelessness and the reality that panhandlers are not all homeless and that many people who are actually homeless suffer from a whole host of disabilities that, yes, frequently involve addiction, but also involve many severe mental disorders, even people like THAT ultimately think—Go get a job, you lazy parasite!
Interesting!
In fairness to Ms. Brosnahan, Kadet notes that “still, Ms. Brosnahan gives to everyone who isn’t obviously high. Her donation: cash and a train pass. ‘People’s faces light up when you give them a MetroCard.'” Well, isn’t that nice! They ought to be fucking grateful they’re getting a Metrocard. I hope they whisper Ms. Brosnahan’s names in their prayers at night. That’s the only reason I ever do anything good. I want to think people include me in their prayers. I need all the help I can get.
