I try not to take Bill O'Reilly too seriously, but since Keith O. took himself off the air, Bill has had a nearly free ride.
I’m writing to you today to suggest that you kiss my ass. On your July 24 show, your Talking Point segment was dedicated to equating receiving government aid to being weak. I have long thought you should kiss my ass, but your cruel remarks this past Tuesday are the latest reason I have for requesting that you pucker up and plant a big, Bugs Bunny kiss on my right (appropriate side) ass cheek.
“…35 percent of American homes receive some kind of welfare. And that doesn't include Social Security or Medicare which we, the American workers, pay into.
I'm talking about the more than 100 million Americans who are currently getting taxpayer funds from other Americans because they can't or won't earn enough to support themselves. In 50 years, we've gone from six percent to 35 percent in this arena.”
“Few oppose safety nets for those who through no fault of their own have fallen on hard times. A humane society provides for those people, children, the elderly, the mentally and physically depleted. But we are now way beyond that in America. We have become a society that tolerates slackers, and in some cases, even rewards irresponsible behavior.”
For Christ’s sake, Bill! Do you really believe that one third of our population is suffering from some moral weakness or laziness? Do you believe this “weakness” was brought on by the fact that we have Social Safety Net in place to catch those that fall or make the mistake of getting old or commit the sin of letting their job be outsourced and all the other things that have gone wrong in this country over the last 50 years?
We are to believe that a man who has a job that allows him to pay his bills and otherwise take care of his family would look over the fence and see the “fabulous” life of his neighbor who is on the “welfare” and then chuck his job to go on the dole.
Mr. O’Reilly, have you ever lived on the welfare? It isn’t any fun. It is not free whiskey and whores. It’s humiliating, and it doesn’t pay as much as people like you love to pretend it does.
Jackasses like you act as if unemployment is barrels and barrels of unlimited cash. When I was on unemployment, I got around $1,000.00 a month. My rent was $600.00 and my car payment was $240.00.
You describe an America where it pays better to be on the welfare than it does to have a job with medical insurance. Your arguments go something like this, “There are lots of jobs out there, so anyone that is out of work has no excuse to not have a job. They must be living so well on the welfare that they don’t want a job.” This is at best a disingenuous argument and at worst a purposeful lie.
You and your ilk want people to believe that America has created a huge leisure class of people on the welfare. It’s not like a giant country club with pony rides for the children and double-strength refrigerator boxes for the elderly.
I know you think your childhood gives you the street cred to tell people that need help they are weak, but you don’t. You paid more money than I will make the rest of my life to a former employee for unsolicited dirty talk. When you have enough disposable income to make million dollar mistakes and not be totally wiped out, you have no idea what it’s like on the street. Please shut up about what it’s like to be poor.
You don’t like helping people that need it with your tax dollars. I don’t like killing civilians in foreign countries with drone strikes. Why don’t you fund the drone strikes, and I’ll fund helping people.
So let’s say you and others like you get your way, and we slash and burn government assistance. In your story, everyone living high off the government teat will see that the party is over and finally go back to work…you know that won’t happen, but it’s the story that powers your pipe dream.
The truth is that the majority of folks on the welfare will keep spiraling down until society has to pay to lock them up or bury them. They won’t have the decency to just crawl off to die by throwing themselves into an active volcano so as to keep the mess to a minimum.
Nope, the America you describe won’t come about when we quit coddling the weaklings. You’ll be faced with the choice you have now…help people to become tax payers or build more prisons and hire more guards.