Links
Archives
Saturday, January 14, 2006
|
Next Step: Analysis Like most hoaxes, this one (see post directly below) will turn out to have many authentic elements. Id est, these idiots do actually beg on the streets. They actually think that “We’re challenging the stereotype of being a beggar.” They actually think “Is this community theirs or is it ours?" is a clever question. But let’s take a look at the numbers. They make “up to $300 a day and once made $800. …Pancoast… (by the way, UD came up with two Jason Pancoasts when she Googled the name: our beggar, and a computer engineer in Boston ) estimates he and his wife can make $30,000 to $40,000 a year panhandling.” Add food stamps and you get a comfortable living. Distasteful as UD, a math illiterate, finds it to think even for a moment about numbers, allow her to doubt these (she’d say they are much too high), and allow her to suggest that whatever the numbers, they are not the result of panhandling as you and I know it. Let us take a closer look at Ashland. Ashland is not a city; it’s a town, with around 19,000 residents. It’s hyper-liberal (here’s its Wikipedia entry), arguably the most liberal locality in the state. It’s got a university and a Shakespeare festival. Begging there is, an ex-mayor complains, “commonplace.” Indeed, some people think a recent drop in the number of people coming to the festival has to do with the unpleasantness of walking around the town: [One townsperson] points to the drop in the number of tourist visits to Oregon Shakespeare Festival last year as evidence. He says the city has gotten letters from disgruntled tourists and fretting business owners, as has the festival and the Chamber of Commerce. A homeless camp has been proposed. The homeless camp, [one observer says], will do nothing but invite an explosion of all the aforementioned problems, which will in turn ensure a mass exodus of the tourists. Okay, so the background to our affluent beggar story is a town where panhandling is basically normalized, a well-established part of the scene, and where, we may presume, the townspeople are sympathetic and generous to panhandlers. Within this larger context, Pancoast stands out as an articulate ideologue, “outspoken in his beliefs” about rich and poor. UD’s guess, then, is that he makes his money not from random approaches to people, as in classic beggary, but from a small permanent roster of clients -- people who know him, like his ideas, and want to subsidize them. This is not really a story about panhandling, in other words. It’s a story about a locally subsidized Oregon think tank named Jason Pancoast. A final point about how much money the Pancoasts have. Are you satisfied that you’ve been told about all of their income sources? Why no information about their families? People like the Pancoasts who are living like idiots typically have distraught families with money in the background, helping them out in various ways. In short, loathe as I am to undermine this terrific “affluent beggars” story, I want to use it as an example of the sort of half-told hoaxy tale we’re always falling for… |
