On Being Poor: Excellent Commentary From Operative B.G.

‘Puter received the following missive from Operative B.G. shortly after publishing his “Lies, Damned Lies and Statistics” post yesterday. It’s so good, ‘Puter’s running it unedited.

Every single word you wrote is true (and in other news, water is wet, and gravity works everywhere). And yet, people don’t see the obvious, because they’re getting the opposite message broadcast at them all day, every day.

Some years ago, in Our Nation’s Capital, I spotted a city bus with a big ad on the side exhorting you to help the homeless, because, the ad claimed, “Homelessness Happens.”

This threw me into a Czar-like rage – to this day, I’m thankful I did not have an axe, because I’ve never been arrested. “No,” I growled, ”homelessness doesn’t ‘happen’; it’s the result of disastrous career choices,” the big three of which you so clearly laid out.

But that message isn’t what we get every day. Remember what our president said, speaking at George Washington University a couple of years ago? He claimed, repeatedly, that if you’re well-off, it’s because you were “fortunate.” He didn’t say squattley-do about how working hard, having only the children you can afford, and finishing school can practically guarantee you won’t end up broke and homeless.

Success or failure in life is just a matter of dumb luck, our president assures us, and it’s the ~~government’s~~ taxpayers’ job to mitigate the utterly predictable disastrous results of your complete mismanagement of your life, for which you are totally not responsible. And given that most people have trouble accepting blame for anything, even who left the macaroni and cheese on the kitchen table overnight for the dog to gobble down, what lifelong failure is going to disagree with him?

As always, if you have comments on something any Gormogon has written, email us. All of us (except ‘Puter) are quite good about responding, and we frequently publish (with credit) worthy emails in postings on this site.

'Puter

Always right, unless he isn’t, the infallible Ghettoputer F. X. Gormogons claims to be an in-law of the Volgi, although no one really believes this.

’Puter carefully follows economic and financial trends, legal affairs, and serves as the Gormogons’ financial and legal advisor. He successfully defended us against a lawsuit from a liquor distributor worth hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid deliveries of bootleg shandies.

The Geep has an IQ so high it is untestable and attempts to measure it have resulted in dangerously unstable results as well as injuries to researchers. Coincidentally, he publishes intelligence tests as a side gig.

His sarcasm is so highly developed it borders on the psychic, and he is often able to insult a person even before meeting them. ’Puter enjoys hunting small game with 000 slugs and punt guns, correcting homilies in real time at Mass, and undermining unions. ’Puter likes to wear a hockey mask and carry an axe into public campgrounds, where he bursts into people’s tents and screams. As you might expect, he has been shot several times but remains completely undeterred.

He assures us that his obsessive fawning over news stories involving women teachers sleeping with young students is not Freudian in any way, although he admits something similar once happened to him. Uniquely, ’Puter is unable to speak, read, or write Russian, but he is able to sing it fluently.

Geep joined the order in the mid-1980s. He arrived at the Castle door with dozens of steamer trunks and an inarticulate hissing creature of astonishingly low intelligence he calls “Sleestak.” Ghettoputer appears to make his wishes known to Sleestak, although no one is sure whether this is the result of complex sign language, expert body posture reading, or simply beating Sleestak with a rubber mallet.

‘Puter suggests the Czar suck it.