[UPDATE]:
Welcome, Crooks & Liars!
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Next time someone says we need to let “charity” deal with the poor, remind them that the reason that doesn’t work is because people are selfish assholes:
Dear Prudence,
I live in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the country, but on one of the more “modest” streets—mostly doctors and lawyers and family business owners. (A few blocks away are billionaires, families with famous last names, media moguls, etc.) I have noticed that on Halloween, what seems like 75 percent of the trick-or-treaters are clearly not from this neighborhood. Kids arrive in overflowing cars from less fortunate areas. I feel this is inappropriate. Halloween isn’t a social service or a charity in which I have to buy candy for less fortunate children. Obviously this makes me feel like a terrible person, because what’s the big deal about making less fortunate kids happy on a holiday? But it just bugs me, because we already pay more than enough taxes toward actual social services. Should Halloween be a neighborhood activity, or is it legitimately a free-for-all in which people hunt down the best candy grounds for their kids?
—Halloween for the 99 Percent
OMG. Prudence responds:
Your whine makes me kind of wish that people from the actual poor side of town come this year not with scary costumes but with real pitchforks. Stop being callous and miserly and go to Costco, you cheapskate, and get enough candy to fill the bags of the kids who come one day a year to marvel at how the 1 percent live.
A part of me has to wonder if some of these kids from “less fortunate areas” aren’t maybe, you know, of a different skin color from our letter writer? And that maybe a big part of her beef is that her neighborhood is overrun with black and brown families for a night? Just a guess, but certainly one that has to be considered.
This isn’t the first time the holidays have brought out the less charitable side of Americans. A few years ago I wrote about local Nashvillians begrudging the trash collectors their Christmas tip because “mah tax dollahs!” Funny how some folks seem to think that paying taxes entitles them to be selfish, self-satisfied pricks.
Get over yourselves and STFU. And if our letter writer really doesn’t think those poor kids deserve her candy because of all the free stuff they get from the taxpayers, she can turn off all the house lights, shut the curtains, and hole up under her blanket for a night, blocking out the cries from the less fortunate outside her window. Seems to be working for her so far.
Southern Beale 
“A part of me has to wonder if some of these kids from “less fortunate areas” aren’t maybe, you know, of a different skin color ”
I think you’re funnin’ us. If they weren’t a different color would she even notice that they were getting out of BRAND NEW WELFARE CADILLACS?!?!?
Halloween is one of my favorite holidays, second only to Thanksgiving. My kids are in their 20s, i.e., not kids anymore, and I still buy candy. I oooh and ahhh over the little ones’ costumes — I had a zombie in a formal evening gown last year. Mahvelous!!!! — and my greatest desire is that there not be a lot of candy left. We live in a decidedly middle class neighborhood, and I don’t care who gets there on foot or in a car. You know, Little Miss Snotnose is probably seeing at least SOME kids from around her neighborhood whose parents take them around by car because it’s SAFER that way, but I doubt from her billet doux that it would occur to her.
Also, just for the record, I remember going out on Halloween with a friend and her family one year, and her father drove us all over town, to neighborhoods I had never been to before and definitely didn’t live in. It was an adventure! This would have been in the very early 1960s. Nothing new here, folks, move along.
Sincerely,
Less Fortunate, and Damned Proud of It
I can’t believe I read something like that. That’s……..
The little boy in our neighborhood jumped up and down when he saw some tricksters coming . He was so excited ! He wanted to give away candies. ( We did notice there were fewer kids going around last year,… and the number of kids was actually going down every year )
I just came from a Halloween picnic with a costume contest. Apparently Maleficent is a popular costume for girls this year! I haven’t seen the movie so I didn’t know who the character was at first. LOL.
I can’t recommend “Full Bars”, the Bob’s Burgers’ Halloween episode, enough: Not-rich kids go to the fancy part of town for the houses where they give out full-sized candy bars.
And an ESPN regular (name forgotten, retired NFLer) always mentions about how he grew up not-rich, and now that he’s made it, he gives out the full-sized bars at his house, and his house is very popular on Halloween.
We used to Trick’r’Treat in the local neighborhood and then go to “Fair Acres” (Warren Buffet’s neighborhood–for reelz) and if we were lucky get the folks who had no candy and gave out MONEY, instead!!
Garrison Keillor once posited that the current wave of conservatism (a.k.a. unenlightened selfishness) was exacerbated by that one year where kids were given boxes to collect money for UNICEF on Halloween, and the feeling of being cheated was never gotten over.
Therefore, if as an eight-year-old, candy (or insufficient candy) was received one Halloween, that kid may have grown up to make the world pay for it.
Or as Freud would say, “not enough time at the breast.”
My wife is a social worker. Somehow I’ve spent the better part of my adult life without her mentioning that bit of Freudiana to me, and I have not considered my life missing that part of information.
(PS We don’t have kids, so that’s a big part of it.)
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A friend of my nephews wife (not sure if that’s present tense) is a Randroid. He’s been ragging on the folks in Denmark for being “takers” because of their taxes and social safety net. He is, of course, using the internet to spread his message.
One of his comments contains a quote.about the TAKERZ! I asked him whose words they were. He was quoting himself. I can see him running for office on the DKNY (Don’t Know Nuttin, Yet) ticket.
Well, as someone who has actually lived in Denmark and seen the quality of life a free education and healthcare provide for the largest number of people, the “takerz” seem to have it pretty good. It’s true, you don’t have people living in 12,000-sq-ft mansion with a fleet of chauffer-driven Hummers and a private helipad but you also don’t have the homeless, mentally ill, and impoverished banging at the gates of your private enclave, and you don’t have the raging paranoia that comes with great wealth, either: people aren’t constantly afraid someone is going to take their stuff.
There’s a reason Denmark has topped the list of world’s happiest countries for the past 10 years or so.
Must be a member of that “Family Values” group, or maybe that “Christian Values” group. Personally, I think she needs to work on her Human Values.