Pacific Views

One woman's life (continued).

Yesterday, we linked to a NY Times Magazine story about the life of Caroline Payne, a New England woman scrambling to keep herself and her family out of poverty. In that post, this magpie wondered how anyone could justify an economic system that dealt out the difficulties Payne has had to deal with.

Well, Charlotte Allen at the right-wing Independent Women's Forum seems to have anticipated our question, and she explains why Caroline Payne is a whiner who deserves everything that's happened to her.

I must have a heart made of granite, but I just can’t feel sorry for Caroline Payne, the off-and-on welfare mother/credit-card binger who’s supposed to an example of our nation’s beleaguered working poor, the "millions at the bottom of the labor force who contribute to the country’s prosperity" but don’t get anything back, as writer David K. Shipler puts it in "A Poor Cousin of the Middle Class," this week’s sob story in Sunday’s NYT magazine--in which Caroline whines about her $6.80-an-hour job at a convenience store.

From the way I read Caroline’s saga, it’s prosperous America that’s been handing out tens of thousands of dollars worth of freebies to Caroline over the years (Shipley is coy about her age), and Caroline who’s given very little back. One big reason that Caroline hasn’t moved up the economic ladder looks pretty simple to me: She refuses to wear her (free, Medicaid-supplied) dentures (check the photo). Sorry, Caroline (and oh-so-politically correct Shipler, who remarks sarcastically that Caroline is "missing that radiant, tooth-filled smile that Americans have been taught to prize as highly as their right to vote"). This may sound harsh, but if you want a job that entails interacting with the public or supervising employees, you gotta have teeth. Ask George Washington.

Now what this magpie wonders is how people like the IWF's Charlotte Allen can live with themselves.