Um, well, I think one of the first few posts was rather incendiary. Actually, I don’t see the purpose of the OP, linking to a big black fellow sprawled on a bed. What were people expected to do? Skirt around the colour issue? Pontificate about welfarism? Compare the Holiday Inn with Travelodge? Comment on the picture on the wall? His shirt on the lamp?
:dubious:
Well, it was in a historical setting, And looking at dictionaries here it seems to be equal of using the term “indians” on Native Americans. Not as bad as “Nigger”, but I see your point.
(I need to send a note to the creator of “Bloom County” that used that term in the 80’s)
Hell, it was used in a Shakespeare’s Sister song (“I Don’t Care”, in a Victorian context), and I like them.
I guess you could say it was a historical context*, and I wasn’t offended by its use here, I just thought you might like to know that the word can be very offensive. A lot more offensive than “Indian” to certain people (South African Coloured, I’m one). The etymology of the word is all about Europeans putting us down because they couldn’t shape our phonemes. Typical!
We prefer “Khoi-khoi”.
*I was thinking more about actual historical quotes or such, or things set in that time period.
Because sometimes - not this time, but sometimes - they need that help to survive.
Actually, it wasn’t until Marley23’s comment about watermelon that it was clear that the subject of the OP was black. By “cultural heritage” I just assumed “over-entitled welfare sponge,” and most of the people I’ve known in that category were white.
300 helped and back on their feet (such as it were) and 4 deadbeats?
I call that good odds. I suck at math, but isn’t that like .01% of the refugees in NYC being parasites? Would that the rest of the world was the same way.
He could just be lazy and <insert pejorative adjective here>, but couldn’t he also be depressed? Take the room payment out of the picture and I see a guy who sleeps all the time, isn’t interested enough to ensure steady income or food sources for himself etc. That sounds like depression to me.
Not sure just a what a caseworker can do about that, but it’s a possiblity. His remarks re FEMA should send him more make sense in that scenario–he doesn’t want this twilight existence to end. It’s damned hard to struggle and earn a living.
Dunno 'bout cultural heritage here, but surely there is something the courts could do to get him into some kind of work relief program or even a half way house of some kind. I see no reason for the hotel-and I agree with the removal of services from that room (then again, not cleaning it might bring in vermin and the hotel doesn’t want that…).
Close. Just over 1%. 
What does it mean? Never heard it before.
:rolleyes: Math geeks. those people are everywhere!
The subject of the OP seems to me to be extremely depressed. I don’t know how energetic he was before Katrina. But right now, he doesn’t eat regularly, he sleeps a lot. He makes no plans to change his life, or even deal with impending changes. He might be inherently lazy, even stupid. But he is also depressed.
I think the City should offer him an inpatient stay in a Psychiatric hospital, with a contracted exit strategy as a condition. His own choices, if just dropped on the sidewalk in front of the hotel woud do the city no good. Sending him back to New Orleans solves the city’s tax burden, but little else.
Of course that will piss off the most “conservative” observers, since he is going to be continuing to cost society money. Reality is, he will always cost society money. He probably always has. It’s inevitable that the mentally ill cost society money. Just letting them die would be cheaper, but that choice has its own drawbacks for society.
Tris
Just curious - what is the original word that “Hottentot” is a bastardized version of?
P.S. Thank heavens GIGObuster didn’t say “Fuzzy-Wuzzy!”
Wow. That’s a very interesting article. Thanks for the link.
The problem with stories like these is that the media likes to present them in a way that makes Joe Sixpack and Sally Housecoat think “Look, your average Katrina victim” when in reality they have found a single extreme case of loophole abuse.
The media is all about sensationalism and extremes. Unfortunately the public views these things as your average case scenario.
The New York Times is usually above that. If you take into account that it’s part of the Sunday magazine, which is supposed to have a local bent, then it’s not so much about your typical Katrina victim as it is about your typical Katrina victim who’s still in FEMA housing in the New York area.
Which maybe he is representative of, and not an outlier. I don’t know.
It’s derived from a dutch dialect word for “stutterer”.
Khoi languages feature an amazing array of clicks and stops, some of which are very hard to get right. Not that the Dutch tried, you understand, much better just to make fun of what you don’t understand.
Wiki’s article on Khoikhoi isn’t a bad overview.
Perhaps the pit isn’t the place to be asking an honest question, but I’ll take a stab at it anyway( actually, it’s the perfect place cuz I’m gonna get toasted for this one ). Just what are these drawbacks? I’ve always wondered about all of these people who so viehamently assert that human life has inherent value. Why? I just don’t get it. Personally, I think that human life does have value, but it’s based upon what individual humans do. Each of you reading this right now interacts with society and in some way makes life better for others. It might be picking up a piece of trash, or helping an old lady across the street, it might just be that you’re amusing and people like having you around. Value is value, it doesn’t have to be on the scale of “saving children from a burning building”. People like the guy in the article, habitual repeat criminals, hopeless drug addicts, etc…they are nothing but parasites. They’re useless. Any value they might have from picking up trash or amusing people is far outweighed by their cost to society. Shooting them in the back of the head would definitely benefit society as a whole, yet we don’t do that. Why? Why do we as a whole believe that human beings are inherently valuable? To put it back context of the OP, if this guy were to die tomorrow, what would the loss be? The gain would be society no longer having to support this deadbeat. What’s the downside?
I could think of many ways to counter this, but most of them start with “Well, if this happened…”, but I think the most important question is: who decides whether a person has worth? What criteria do we choose, and is it a hard-and-fast rule or a general guideline? And what do we do with the ones who don’t measure up?
What you’re suggesting is called genocide, and it’s illegal by international treaty (like that would stop anyone.)
long list of reasons, dave in no particular order:
- we consider ourselves a civlized society and nice folks just don’t kill others ‘just cause they’re costing us resources.’
- the ‘costing us resources’ argument can also be used for folks with major disabilities. Once you get rid of all those nasty ‘costing us lots of resources’ folks, you may decided that those 'costing us any resources folks aren’t worth having around, either, so little Jimmy w/ a learning disorder, - hell we shouldn’t have to spend any more on him than any other student, off he goes
- ‘worth’ is, like beauty, in the eye of the beholder. There’s any number of folks that I, for instance consider worthless, but the RNC really likes (Ann Coulter comes to mind since I heard that harpy on the Today show this am).
- many of the things you mention as being ‘worthless’ etc are things that can improve, or change, humans have a penchant for doing that. I would admit there’s folks that I work w/professionally that I think “yea, no surprise for them not to change”, but stranger things have happened, some of them did.
- and as ‘worthless’ as I may think that person is, on some scale or another, I can’t recall a single person that I’ve worked w/that had no one who cared about them. So you may think that person is worthless, and you may even be able to show that person has a ‘negative balance’ w/society (as many do), but to some kid out there, that’s the only mom they know.
Never ask for whom the bell tolls, dave.
I’ll put this in a bluntly, Weirddave, in a way that might appeal to your warped mindset: it’s a bad idea to eliminate all of societies so-called parasites, because parasites in manageable numbers generally aren’t that big a drain on our vast resources, cost less than it would to house maximum security prisoners and serve the purpose of testing and training social workers who gain the clinical skills they need to treat societies’ productive citizens. Kill them all, or even just deport them all, then you have nothing left but productive citizens and societies sociopaths and predators left. Predators, by and large, feed off the producers. Instead of taking out the homeless bag lady, they may first go after your wife, or your kids, or you. Like in the wild, human predators rarely turn on each other except over issues of heirachy and territoriality.
We may not like to acknowlegde it, but parasites have the tremendous benefit of being our first line of defense against new and experienced predators who prowl the streets looking for people to exploit, by being the dim-witted resourceless sluggish cannon fodder and easy prey that alerts us to the presence of predators. When maimed war vets, street prostitutes, the homeless, the mentally ill, the physically ill, the poor, the chemically dependant and fail draw the attention of predators, we hard-wroking citizens tend to become the next easy pickings.
So: parasites, producers and predators. That’s a summary of society as I see it. Each have their function. Oh, parasites cost a bit more and they may be unsightly, but when one drops dead on your front stoop from exposure, hypothermia and malnutrition its a goodly reminder to work hard to keep a roof over your head, dress warm and eat well.
Another reason: practicality. If someone is on the edge of death, they’ve got nothing to lose. Giving folks a safety net also gives them a position from which they may descend, serving to keep their antisocial impulses in check if their own morality won’t do the trick.
Daniel