po'er than po'

So. I've been witnessing interwebz drahhhhma today about, of all things, charitable donations to Haiti. The crux of the drama is one person saying donate [material objects] to Haiti and someone else providing many links from reputable charities and so forth saying, no, we don't need your blankets, your food, your old shoes, there's no infrastructure, there's no way to distribute or transport this stuff, GIVE CASH. Well, original poster gets snippy and defensive, because, well, what else do you expect?, it's the internet. And original poster's supporters make the point that some people, like *them*, can't afford to give even five dollars. (But they've got tons of clothes that don't fit. Etc.)

Hint: shut off your high speed internet connection for a month and you'll have sixty bucks to give to earthquake victims. Hint 2: if you're protesting that, no, you don't in fact have internet access at home, but are instead posting from work--work harder, get a promotion, and send the money to Haiti. Yeah, yeah, pot, kettle, lazy ass.

But it led me to wonder about this. Is there really anyone in America who *isn't* actually physically homeless and eating out of garbage cans who couldn't come up with five bucks for charity if they really, really wanted to?

I mean, I have admitted in this very blog that in my youth, there were days that I might have had to ransack the apartment for change to get together enough money to get to work or school or wherever I had to be. But then payday would come along and I'd get my pitiful little minimum wage check and woohoo! money for peanut M&Ms even after the bills got paid. I might have walked home from work at midnight through some pretty sketchy neighborhoods to save cabfare, but I'd scrape up enough money to go out maybe once or twice a month. I might have had to make damn sure to show up at my mom's for Sunday dinner for my one actual substantial meat n' veg meal of the week, but on occasion there'd be a bottle of Kahlua in my house. What I'm trying to say is, I had next to no money left after rent and utilities and tuition and books and transportation, but I managed to find enough for those small indulgences. (Clothes and shoes were all tax refund, Xmas money, and the generosity of my mother.)

So color me skeptical that any American using the friggin' internet can't scrape together 5 bucks by giving up something else. Eat ramen for five days straight. No coffee! Walk somewhere instead of using your car or the subway or the prison bus.

I'm not saying anyone has to do any of that. No one has any kind of obligation to sacrifice in order to give to anyone else. I'm just saying, if you claim to me that you are devastated because you want to help those poor people in Haiti so much but, boohoo, no one wants your old sneakers and you can't possibly spare any cash, I'm not buying it.

xoxo