Posted on 12/17/2006 6:06:06 AM PST by raccoonradio
Mayor Thomas M. Menino is chastising shock jocks Opie & Anthony and WBCN for broadcasting a live "Homeless Shopping Spree" yesterday where homeless people were given money and were taken to a New Jersey mall...
"This so-called "shopping spree" is a sick and twisted exercise that degrades the most vulnerable members of our society," Menino. "This is wrong, and we need the public . . . who care about the homeless and about basic human decency to stand up and tell them so."
According to a live broadcast of the program yesterday, more than 2,000 people showed up at the Mall at Short Hills to greet the homeless crowd and give them extra money as they shopped with gift cards from the Opie & Anthony show.
The broadcast was punctuated with jokes about how the homeless people smelled, how much they drank, and how irresponsible their shopping was, such as buying a pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses and a boom box.
Opie (Greg Hughes) and Anthony (Anthony Cumia) were once fixtures on the Boston shock-jock scene. But in 1998, they were fired from Boston's WAAF-FM after broadcasting a false April Fool's report that Menino had been killed in a car accident in Florida. They then moved their show to New York, became syndicated, and Boston's WBCN picked them up in 2001. But in 2002, the two were kicked off FM radio after they staged a contest that resulted in the arrest of a couple for public lewdness for attempting to have sex in a vestibule at St. Patrick's Cathedral.
(Excerpt) Read more at boston.com ...
Frankly I'd be more upset about having a drunk lech as a Senator, a coward and traitor who inflicted his own wounds before he uninflicted them, a bleary-eyed fag in the House, and having just buried a child molester ex-house member!
So making sure the homeless have coats, shoes and clean clothes this winter, and encouraging hundreds of listeners to show up and buy them food and more clothes, is "a sick and twisted exercise that degrades the most vulnerable members of our society?"
I think Mumbles is just upset that someone's figured out a way to help some of "the most vulnerable members of society" in a way that doesn't make them dependent on voting for him.
Howard did the Homeless shopping spree on his WORTV show many years ago.
Menino and homeless advocates said the show's timing was particularly bad because almost 300 volunteers will conduct an annual homeless census in Boston tomorrow morning. Matt Noyes of the United Disability Housing Partnership/AIDS Housing Corporation called the show a "disgusting spectacle" in a press release and asked the public to complain about it to WBCN.
It seems someone else horned in on their "charity" right when they're calculating how much taxpayer money they're going to get for doing something the private sector was doing for free.
Makes no sense, since the homeless are from New York.
"homeless exploitation"
No such thing. It's a made up term to make this sound nefarious. These homeless people are grown adults who chose to take part in this.
If they are being exploited, so is every game show contestant ever.
I loved this stunt. The Short Hills mall is populated by rich limousine liberals. Lets see them practice what they preach. I am sure they were none too happy to see people who actually have to struggle to make ends meet, some probably for the first time. Hah! Good for O & A.
Richard Bey
Didn't the article say that people showed up to give the homeless gift cards, etc?
This is one of the greatest lies perpetuated today. If "homeless" adequately described these people that would indicate that their problems stem from a lack of traditional housing. That is simply not true. We could (and it has been tried) stick every one of them in a nice dwelling, provide them with a phone to receive job offers on, and nice clothes to interview in, and they would still have problems. That's because "homelessness" is not the problem - it's one of the symptoms of a whole set of problems.
The irony being that I think the whole Homeless Shopping Spree is to panic and disrupt Christmas shoppers and the store owners.
City life ain't the life for me!
ping
Well, Mumbles, at least these homeless people weren't "conjugating" on the Common.
"This is wrong, and we need the public...who care about the homeless and about basic human decency to stand up and tell them so."
So can I just hand out blankets and bottles of whiskey to 'The Homeless?' Will that be OK, Mr. Mayor? ;)
Madistan, WI wants to build a "wet" facility for our local bums. (And they are bums; homeless because they choose to live that way through their own personal choices.) It seems that all the drunk homeless make trouble in the regular facilities that don't allow drugs and alcohol.
So...let's continue to cater to those on the fringes of society! They were called "Hobos" when I was a kid. My kind-hearted Grandma always had a few hanging around the back alley at her house:
"Some hobos now communicate via cellular phones and e-mail. But the classic American hobo of early this century communicated through a much more basic system of marks--a code through which they gave information and warnings to their fellow Knights of the Road."
Symbols:
http://www.slackaction.com/signroll.htm
mad dog.
If they've a sign, "will work for food", offer them some work and watch them tell you to forget it and ask for money instead.
I think he had the interns offer say, $5 cash, or $10 food certificates. Most, if not all, took the cash.
from today's Herald
“Some of them might be recovering alcoholics coming back from addiction and recovery, and they’re doing this for ratings? For a cheap dollar?” Menino said.
(Ted K clip: Hello?...Hello...)
So did Menino ever get the junkies out of the Boston Common/Public Garden? The junkies that shoot up in broad daylight, in front of tourists? The last I heard, his response to the Herald's photo essay (the one in which the photographer happened to catch an addict overdosing and then dying) was an anti-litter crusade. Menino said that clean parks would discourage the addicts!
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