Thursday, November 29, 2012

Hipsters On Food Stamps

Via WRSA

 
In the John Waters-esque sector of northwest Baltimore -- equal parts kitschy, sketchy, artsy and weird -- Gerry Mak and Sarah Magida sauntered through a small ethnic market stocked with Japanese eggplant, mint chutney and fresh turmeric. After gathering ingredients for that evening's dinner, they walked to the cash register and awaited their moments of truth.
Those are two "hipsters", and the punchline is that they pay for their foodie porn with foodie stamps, which sounds like it should be a terrible thing, except it's in Salon.com, which means they're going to try and tell you how it's a good thing, which they don't, because they can't.  It's madness.

It's very easy and satisfying to hate these two, and nothing would make me happier than to hit them square in the back with a jack-o-lantern.  But I also recognize that I am being told to hate them, so I have to take a step back and find out why it is so important that I hate them.  I did.  I should have just reached for the pumpkin.

No one but the state and psychiatry can profit from another's misery, and they are the same thing, so let's see why Election Day doesn't matter.

I.

First, the obvious: what's wrong with hipsters on food stamps is that these are college educated people who should be able to get jobs, not live off the state.   They're not black, after all.  Hell, one of the two in the article is even Asian.  "What, like Russian Asian?"  No, like Asian Asian.  "Whaaaaaaat?"

"It's the economy, stupid!"  Thanks guy from 1992, but the economy did not tell you to go to college for something you knew in advance would make you unemployable, especially when that unemployable choice cost exactly the same as the employable choice, i.e. too much.  Lesson one at the academia should be the importance of separating vocation from avocation, as character actor Fred Thompson and electrical contractor Benjamin Franklin both understood. When I was six I wanted to be in Playboy.  Just because it's your dream, doesn't mean you should pursue it.  

So what makes them hatable is the seeming choice they have made: they could work, yes at jobs they don't like but hey, that's America; but instead they choose to feel entitled to  $200/month from the rest of us salarymen.

However, secondly:

4 comments:

  1. Well I`m not sure anymore , maybe it` just me . But there was a time , and it wasn`t that long ago, when I`d have grabbed those two little queer`s by the scruff of the neck. Gave them a swift kick in the ass and sent them on their way.

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  2. Did you read part 2?
    "The point is not to get you to accept that hipsters deserve food stamps, the point is the opposite: to enrage you, infuriate you, so that you will resist-- because then and only then will you pay for it."

    http://thelastpsychiatrist.com/2012/11/hipsters_on_food_stamps_part_2.html

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