Shawn Macomber at the American Prowler on the The Other Other Half:
New Hampshire -- In 1890, journalist Jacob Riis published a detailed and devastating portrayal of poverty, How the Other Half Lives. On a blindingly bright summer day, along a meticulously manicured lawn, I found today's other half in a most unlikely place: Durham, New Hampshire. And more than a couple of them are running for president. There, and in dozens of "house parties" in the Granite State, they crowd in the huddled but fashionable masses and tell dire tales of woe while people munch on foie gras and quaff champagne.Poor Shawn should get into fictional documentaries like Michael Moore. These Kool Aid drinkers would lap it up and he could live on the Upper East Side too!
The poverty of today is a well-hidden scourge. It's a lesson I learned traveling to several of these Democratic gatherings sprouting up all over the state this past year. I was leaning on a rocking horse in an Exeter home one evening not so long ago, waiting for Howard Dean to breathe some life into the party. Suddenly, the lady of the house glanced at me from across the room, her eyes widened, and she beat a path through the crowd toward me, index finger extended.
"Can you please not sit on that, it's an antique," she said, tugging at her sweater set.
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Before I could answer, another man, in a Brooks Brothers suit, marched up and demanded to be heard. "The core issue nobody wants to talk about, not even Dean, is we need to start the process of liquidating the assets of the fat cats in this country and get about redistributing the wealth," he sermonized. It gave me a flavor of the steroid addled populism of the campaign to come.
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Conspicuously absent from the proceedings, of course, were the traditional poor -- i.e., people who actually have no money, and who are, therefore, icky. The poorest people at these soirees were the reporters covering them. As someone whose income last year registered well below the poverty line, I always harbored hopes that some of this enthusiasm for wealth redistribution would prompt the partygoers to take pity on us poor ink-stained wretches. Alas, it never happened.
