Advice to a Young Liberal Journalist (vanity)

So you want to write about poverty, joblessness, homelessness, and general misery in America. Let me give you some advice, and I'll cut right to the chase and be as blunt as possible.

First, consider your audience. It’s white people. If you are trying to tell a sob story that ends in “we need more social services” most minorities are already on your side and the ones that aren’t have their own sources of information. You’re talking to mainstream white America, so you need to tailor your story to them.

Start with a young white couple who has fallen on hard times, and they need to be attractive. If they are overweight, don’t use their pictures. Find a generic photo of a pretty blonde girl holding a baby and looking serious. This young white couple should have fairly mainstream names. Nothing hippy-ish. And keep the narrative brief, don’t include any detail whatsoever that can even suggest their economic difficulties arise from a variety of foolish choices, even though they so often have. No mention of drugs, alcohol, DUIs, court appearances, gambling, internet addiction, gaming, lottery tickets, strippers… don’t even have them living near Vegas. They should be a couple straight out of a magazine ad in a women’s home journal from 1955. The only financially risky choice they can be allowed to have made is that they have children.

That’s the next point, there have to be children involved. Two is ideal. One kid can be farmed out to its grandparents and 3 or more will exasperate your readers because good grief, show some restraint if you’re living on the edge of poverty. But 2 children is good. Even conservatives care about children. Well, most of us. I’m not that fond of them but don’t worry, I’m in the minority.

Avoid pets in the story. Just a helpful tip here, those who don’t care for pets will immediately classify them as a foolish and unnecessary expense and become irritated with your starring family. Those who love pets will stop worrying about the family and start worrying what’s going to happen to the pets, and become irritated with the couple for endangering their animals. (Especially don’t mention cats. Your audience will immediately divide along the lines of “eat the cats,” and “feed the children to the cats.”)

The narrative for your couple goes like this: they met, they married (or moved in together, if you’re writing on the west coast), both had jobs and were doing well. You have to establish them as having started out just fine. Or at least they should appear to have started out well enough. Leave out any red flags that will alert the reader and should have alerted the couple. If they started out with credit card debt or anyone was already on probation, in traffic school, or unemployed, don’t mention that. If the husband was unemployed, make up some under-the-table employment that he was “doing well at.” Helping his brother roof houses or something.

The only debt you can admit to them starting out with is student debt. Universities are quickly turning into Big Tobacco in the public eye, so swaddling your imaginary family with student debt is quite alright, although be very cagey about admitting just how exclusive a university they attended. Like pets, college is a tricky topic. If they didn’t go to college they were lazy and if they did they were privileged, so a quick mention of a student loan with no details is best. And for God’s sake, if either of them majored in the humanities, keep your mouth shut about it.

There should be a house. They bought a house, they rented a house, they lived in a house somehow, but there has to be a house. For some reason, the idea of downsizing from a house to an apartment touches the class nerve of every American heart. A man’s home is his castle, and every time someone loses their house, you’d think the Romanovs were murdered all over again. If it’s the size of Downton Abbey and they could barely afford it to begin with, don’t mention that. Hey, if they were making the mortgage payment and the minimum payment on the credit cards, they were doing fine. It was FINE.

Now comes the Unavoidable Disaster. One of them has a medical problem and the other loses their job. This is standard in the sob story of poverty in America. There always has to be a medical problem and there always has to be a downsizing. It’s like amnesia and adoption in daytime drama: you need it to keep the story moving. Otherwise, what are you going to say? They maxed out their credit cards at Ikea and then she got sacked for sleeping with her boss? No, no… there was a medical emergency and a downsizing, always.

Be careful with your medical emergencies. Avoid the ones that alert careful readers to shenanigans. For instance, if he has a bad back but it doesn’t interfere with his hobbies of fishing, carpentry, horseback riding, and impregnating his wife (again), your audience will start sniffing the air for manure. Also avoid neuro-fibromyalgia, migraines, depression, mental illness, and allergies. These illnesses appeal to liberals, who are a delicate lot, but they are already on your side. Stick with medical problems involving the birth of children, cancer (don’t say it was just a pre-cancerous melanoma spot removed from someone’s shoulder, say cancer. It’s a magic word. Cancer!), or an injury that can be seen with Xrays. Car accident is fine as long as your couple didn’t cause it. Hit by a drunk driver is extra good.

Now you have the recipe you need: nice white couple falls on hard times. They are going to lose their home! They are staggering (staggering!) under the weight of debt! There are children involved! In Olden Tymes, they would have downsized their home, or moved in with family, tightened up their belts, and with help from the local churches and charities, survived. But that would involve all that nasty downsizing and belt-tightening and budgeting and the loss of standing and status, and that’s what these sob stories are really about. It’s not about how they are going to starve (white people don’t starve). It’s how they are going to lose their status. As house-dwellers. As car drivers. As consumers. As well-dressed people without a care in the world. This is the manner of living to which they have become accustomed and to come down in the world is like… like… did I mention the Romanovs? Did you see season 3 of Downton Abbey where the family almost had to move from a castle to a lodge that would only accommodate a handful of servants, for God’s sake? This is a tragedy! This an outrage. We need more social services!

One for the children should be the one with cancer...

But make sure the child is old enough to be in school for maximum SOB points...

Also make sure one of the parents was recently downsized from their job at a Giant Mega Comapny so you can get a Marxist jab at the economy in there...

An excellent article. Well done.

Nothing frosts me more than a "news article" trumpeting the plight of some poor unfortunate .... with a big screen TV, or lavish car in the background of the photos, or a "single mom" with four kids and no dad in the picture (did she not know where they all were coming from?).

Truly, we are the sum of our choices. Neal Boortz once said that there were three guarantees of failure:

Not graduating from high school.

Having kids before you get married.

Getting involved in illegal drugs.

Now, you can miss all three of these and still fail, but it's a whole lot harder. While, any one of the three - or a combination - will make succeeding in your life far, far more difficult.

Whenever I see these stories, they are always the same and there are suspicious, gaping holes in them where certain details and decisions would usually be. It’s almost like those “baffling” and “random” violent crimes that take place in the inner city... you know darn well something is missing.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.