Yeah, I'm one of those liberals

A friend whom I like very much recently forwarded me a “funny” email that actually didn’t make me very happy. It was a picture of a man taking a picture of Michelle Obama with a cell phone while she volunteered at a soup kitchen. The caption suggested that he was taking a picture of the first lady with a Blackberry that cost him $100+ a month while he mooched off the government. That assumes an awful lot, and I don’t hold it against my friend because maybe I’m just being humorless. Except, I don’t really think I am.
I personally do not know anyone who would rather eat with filthy, smelly, drunken bums than earn a living. Granted, there are many people in this country who have not been around the truly downtrodden, but it is safe to say that you would not break bread with someone with matted hair and exposed festering toes unless you had to. If you commuted by subway in the 1980s, you’d know that many homeless people could clear a subway car in rush hour because they were that hard to be around. I promise you that any poor person would rather afford his or her own meals than to sit next to someone who has lived on the streets for years.
There was no way of telling that the phone being used to photograph Mrs. Obama was a Blackberry or that it cost $100+ in monthly service charges. There are many different pay-as-you-go cell phones on the market today, and I am sure they are a blessing to the poor, and serve as the only telephone for countless impoverished families. Certainly, we all lived without cell phones years ago, but that does not mean they aren’t useful and that they don’t serve to keep us safer in certain situations.
Finally, the government doesn’t have soup kitchens. This person was not mooching off the government. Your tax dollars had nothing to do with this.
Yes, I am a liberal through and through. And all I’m asking is that we all stop assuming people are lazy or trying to get over on the rest of us unless we know the truth. No, I’m not one of those people who think the poor are all the salt of the earth and the rich are all mean – that’s so “Pretty in Pink”. If anything, watching Judge Judy has told me that some of the truly poor are so beaten down that they will sue their own adult kids for $300.00.
A little compassion, a little understanding and a little benefit of the doubt – don’t we all need that?