In Monday night’s Fox News/WSJ debate, Fox News‘ Juan Williams “challenged Gingrich for his statements calling President Obama a ‘food stamp president’ and advocating that kids learn the work ethic by doing, for instance, janitorial work at schools. Gingrich has thrived throughout the debate season on combat with moderators and Williams was straying into his wheelhouse. A righteously ticked Gingrich referred to Williams as ‘Juan,’ and proceeded to light up the auditorium in the most memorable moment of the night.”
More specifically, Williams zeroed in on the “food stamp president” comment for which Gingrich has come under fire and insinuated that it was racist to make such a claim:
“Speaker Gingrich, you said black Americans should demand jobs, not food stamps. You also said poor kids lack a strong work ethic and proposed having them work as janitors in their schools,” Williams asked. “Can’t you see that this is viewed, at a minimum, as insulting to all Americans, but particularly to black Americans?”
So, calling President Obama a Food Stamp President is “insulting” to black Americans. That’s convenient. He (Newt) has simply made the factual claim that under this president more food stamps have been given out (to ALL ethnic groups) than during any other presidency. WHAT, pray tell, is racist about that? Williams brought up race. Newt never said anything of the sort. Frankly, those who make the case that such a statement is racist or at minimum insensitive towards African Americans are in fact revealing their own misguided belief that African Americans receive the majority of the food stamps. Incidentally that just simply isn’t true. According to the the USDA, as reported by Fox News:
Newt’s point in the broader sense (that is, beyond food stamps alone) is that rather than continue to make this an entitlement nation whose citizens are continuously reaching their hands out for the next government goody, why not find ways to get ALL Americans back to work to become productive, contributing members of society. Is that, or is that NOT a decent idea? By the way, before someone accuses me otherwise, I am no insinuating that African Americans or any other minority is “lazy.” I am simply pointing out the fact that rather than encouraging ways to get Americans back to work, the Left loves to encourage ways to keep them OUT of work and ON the government dole. Yeah, I said it. Oh, and for that matter, so did the former Speaker of the House. No, not Newt. Nancy Pelosi once made this comment in reference to federal dollars meant to stimulate the economy: “It is the biggest bang for the buck when you do food stamps and unemployment insurance. The biggest bang for the buck.” Oh, ok. And those annoying jobs. . . .those just get in the way of you dragging along an entire swath of the American population, right Nancy?
Here’s the skinny. The Left seems to think (or at least they propogate the idea) that those who live in poverty are there because of some elitist group of white males running the show, finding ways to directly abuse minorities, women, etc. etc. Therefore, the concept of bashing the distribution of food stamps is seen as offensive, because they people supposedly don’t have a choice. Through that lens, therefore, Juan Williams’ insipid comment makes some sense. Is that really true, however? Isn’t it just a bit more reasonable to make the claim that the president and Congress have done a dismal job with this economy, and the resulting growth in the need for Food Stamps and other social programs are a direct indication of the same? I’d think so, but for the left-wing media types, this sort of logic just doesn’t fly. It’s much, much easier to run straight to the race card.
By the way, Juan, isn’t calling the suggestion that poor children could do janitorial work at schools to build work ethic “offensive,” in turn particularly “insulting” to America’s janitors? Whoops.
