By Jeremy Lott on 5.2.03 @ 12:02AM
Once again, one has to rely on traditional conservative bogeymen can explain what went wrong in the public square.
I haven't checked the New York Times index of banished
wildly un-PC words and expressions lately, but my belief that "bum"
is on the list approaches metaphysical certitude. It's "homeless
persons," got it? You'd better. Anyone who insists on the old term
is insensitive or, worse, Republican.
Fortunately, normal people rarely submit their vocabularies to
the language police for vetting. Liberal friends and acquaintances
generally prefer "bums" to "homeless persons" without giving it
much mind. Their lack of concern is less a finger aimed at the
tsk-tsk set than an acknowledgment of reality. If "bum" is a term
of opprobrium, it is a very mild one -- the kind of thing you say
about someone who could make something more of himself, or about
actual street people.
Maybe it was my wacky public school education, but I've always
had a soft spot in my cold black heart for bums. Some see begging
as inherently shameful, but I remain baffled as to why. What could
be a more human than one person appealing to another's generosity
or ego, asking for any help -- any crumb -- that the other is
willing to give? Young professionals do the same thing every day,
several times a day, and then get indignant when a guy on the
sidewalk asks "Buddy, can you spare a buck?"
It's when the requests turn into demands that begging begins to
annoy. To wit, New Yorkers were right to cheer when Rudy finally
cracked down on the squeegee men, who blocked traffic giving
unwanted (and lousy) window washes, and demanded money from pissed
off motorists.
On a trip to a college newspaper conference in San Francisco
several years back, what surprised was not the sheer number of
bums, but their lack of manners. They were rude and foul and acted
as though we owed them. A great number of them were crazy or high
(or both). My group consisted of three ladies and two gents from a
biweekly rag, who took to traveling as a pack. The hulk of an
editor brought up the rear; I took point, my eyes scanning all the
nooks and doorways for any would be surprises.
The problem has only gotten worse since I last put a flower in
my hair. In a Christian Science Monitor article
last spring, Mark Sappenfield wrote that San Fran, a city so
tolerant that "urinating in public is a cherished right," is trying
to figure out to do with its bums. The problem isn't so much the
massive expenditure on public health -- $100 million a year in the
city and the surrounding area -- as that so many of them are dying
-- nearly 200 bums dropped dead in 2000 alone. (There was a slight
drop in 2001 and the statistics from 2002 are mired in
controversy.) This made only small dent in San Fran's overall
homeless population, which Sappenfield pegs near the size of the
transient population of New York, in a city one-tenth the size of
the Big Apple.
I don't pretend to have the solution to this problem, but the
traditional conservative bogeymen seem to be a reasonable
explanation of what went wrong. Take one part
de-institutionalization of people who are mentally not all there.
Throw in large cash payments for anyone with an open-fingered
gloved hand outthrust and plenty of check-cashing stores and liquor
shops. Add in an electorate so out to lunch that they'll toss
politicians who want to limit dependency or lock the crazies up.
Stir.
The result is a bitter brew that San Franciscans may be forced
to take straight, and soon.
topics:
Education
