Newt Gingrich wants to pay poor kids to clean toilets. And all of the right people are horrified. TheNation says Gingrich is running on “a platform that seems to have been written by the unreformed Ebenezer Scrooge.” The editors of the Newark Star-Ledger proclaim Gingrich wants to “bring back the days of Oliver Twist.” The host of “Meet the Press,” David Gregory, suggests Gingrich’s take on the inner-city poor is a “grotesque distortion.”
This controversy started last month at Harvard, when Gingrich suggested in a speech that perhaps the best way to break the cycle of poverty in inner cities is to break the culture of poverty that sustains it by, among other things, paying kids to do janitorial work.
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“Really poor children in really poor neighborhoods have no habits of working and have nobody around them who works,” Gingrich explained recently in Iowa when asked to clarify his position. “So they literally have no habit of showing up on Monday. They have no habit of staying all day. They have no habit of ‘I do this and you give me cash,’ unless it’s illegal.”
It’s a classically Gingrichian spectacle, illuminating a lot about the presidential candidate, but also about his critics and his swarming ranks of fans.
Gingrich is a rhetorical yoga swami. As my National Review colleague Kevin Williamson says, he can shove his foot in his mouth while putting his finger on the issue. Gingrich is right about the culture of poverty, but he opens himself to easy rebuttal by speaking so sweepingly and categorically. And did he really have to pick toilet-scrubbing as his preferred workfare?
Still, what his critics don’t — or refuse to — understand is that he’s not driven by a lack of compassion, but a surplus of it. The liberal bureaucratic mindset seems to define compassion simply as spending more money on systems and policies that have made problems worse and keep the usual special interests happy.
Gingrich thinks compassion should be measured not by inputs but outputs. Spending trillions on poverty is beyond simply uncompassionate if you waste the money and make things worse. It’s evil.
Anyone who wants to understand Gingrich’s views on poverty should read his March 2008 speech at the American Enterprise Institute (where I’m a visiting fellow). Gingrich rejected then-candidate Obama’s suggestion that the legacy of racism combined with a failure to fund education to liberals’ satisfaction “helps explain the pervasive achievement gap” in poor inner-city schools.
Hello Jonah. I met you and your mother years ago at the Clinton impeachment rally in DC. Hope you're all doing well.
Enjoyed this article!
I'm not sure what his exact quote is but I heard he said "clean up their own schools" which could (and should) include toilets.
It isn't anything a worker at McDonalds doesn't have to do, and its the first task of a soldier on entering the military, and quite frankly its something many kids are sometimes tasked with helping with in their own homes.
So yes the Liberal Elitists who paid housekeepers to do all that kind of work are understandably, if not justifiably, horrified.
Its also amazing what happens to a place where people (including youth) have a vested interest in keeping it clean.
But the Swamy of Rhetoric (that was a good one!) Has no fear of the Hoof-in-Mouth syndrome that has plagued so many Conservatives over the years. He is, afterall, the Swamy of Rhetoric. Poor Quayle let himself be slaughtered over the spelling of "potatoes" as I recall. Mr. Gingrich will not suffer this fate. The man knows how to talk :)
I agree with Newt's idea. I went to catholic grade school in the 70's with only one janitor. When I was 10 -11 years old, I had my first after-school job cleaning bathrooms, mopping floors and cleaning blackboards, etc. I earned some spending money and developed a good work ethic and pride in my school. Soon after that, I had a paper route when I was 12 and mowed lawns and shoveled snow and caddied at the local country club. Although I may still vote for Romney, I agree with Newt's point about developing a work-ethic when you're young..
What is offensive is not Newt's suggestion that young people can learn the value of work from actually working at a young age. What is offensive is his suggestion in blanket-fashion that the poorest children have NO work ethic, that their PARENTS have no work ethic, and that they will NEVER have a work ethic if they don't get put hard to work by some great benefactor. I live in central Harlem surrounded by some of the poorest members of our society. There are many who are idle of all ages. But the vast majority spend their days and nights working. working harder than you or I do. They just get paid next to nothing for it.
The overly broad application of an accurate-in-narrow-circumstances principle is indicative of Newt's lack of discipline and the recklessness with which he will likely pursue any presidential agenda. It's what derailed him as Speaker and will (hopefully) derail him as POTUS candidate.
Inference and (mild) hyperbole. He's attacking Gingrich's remarks as "offensive" because he expects broad statements to apply granularly to every member of the class described.
The meaning of Gingrich's statement partly depends on what he meant by "poorest." It can be used to refer to the bottom 1/10th of 1 percent, or to the bottom 10%.
The poorest of the poor may be people who for one reason or another can't or don't work.
Perception determines preference which leads to performance. A culture develops from a shared set of beliefs. Unintended consequences from minimum wage, and child labor laws have hurt the development of minors sense of ambition and achievement. Fed Education policies have driven up tuition costs. The government for all of the good it does is an incomplete thought put into action.
Jonah you really had a good insight today. The culture is the thing while I think that Government has a very hard time ever "fixing" culture it sure can sicken and weaken our culture. The more responsibility that Government takes from citizens the more irresponsible they become. We have to become less so that Government can become more. Most if not all of our worst problems are cultural especially when we are discussing education, poverty and family disintegration. If Government would back off and give us space I still think that Americans have it with in them to respond and recover our culture. But for that to happen we must shrink the power of the top down solutions crowd and allow all of us to fill those gaps ourselves. There will always be hard, sympathetic cases and tragedy but the point is there will ALWAYS be those things trying to make not so with big Government just crushes us all and solves nothing.
Let's all assume that the schools are awful and that money won't fix the problem. Let's further assume that Gingrich and Moynihan are right, that culture determines the success of society.
I agree with all that. Now how do you make a 13 year old clean s#!t off the rim of a toilet? Is that the America you want? An America of farm labor? Good ol' 1880 all over again?
(p.s. at 13 I had to wash blackboards and sweep floors at school. At 16 they let us scholarship kids use the circular floor waxer. See the difference?)
Better farm labor than no labor. I cleaned toilets at my first job when I was 15. The affluent left believes children should devote their time to the accrual of various degrees so they can spend their lives thinking up big ideas. Alas, they produce a lot of crap, both on and off the toilet. Conservatives will have to clean up the latter, but I'm fine with assigning schoolkids the former.
No I don't see the difference. I started babysitting during the summer at age 12 for an infant and a toddler not potty trained. I changed dirty diapers. What's the difference between dirty diapers and cleaning a commode.
Having my own money allowed me to have additional things my family couldn't afford. It certainly taught me to buy wisely and to take proper care of the items MY money purchased.
The very fact that adults no longer know how make a 12 year old clean sh@t off a toilet is a reflection of how far we've fallen. If we haven't got the cajones to direct our children in the way they should go, how in the heck can we hope to discipline the likes of Iran. We're doomed!
Unless I have missed something here, dearest Mike, *You're* the bait and switch artist. Newt suggested janitorial work. I haven't found the quote by Newt mentioning "clean(ing) s#!t off the rim of a toilet".
Janitors can wash blackboards and sweep floors, just like you did at 13.
It's good policy to teach MikeB about hard work at the age of 13.
That's only because MikeB did not grow up in the inner city.
If you live in an affluent suburb, learning about work ethic makes sense.
But if you are an adult who grew up in an affluent suburb, it makes no sense at all to try to instill that same work ethic in the kids in the inner city.
But, progressives aren't racist, or anything. They simply hold minorities and the "disadvantaged" to standards about 1,000 times lower than to that which they hold themselves.
It's cos they are genetically superior. MikeB's said so himself. He was born with all the advantages. Hence, genetically superior.
And, no wonder they're more qualified to help people. You have to have low expectations, low standards, and no respect for people, before you can begin to help them.
"That’s the irony of the Gingrich surge. All of these GOP voters and Tea Party activists who once supported Michele Bachmann, Rick Perry, and Herman Cain and are now flocking to Gingrich seem not to have noticed Gingrich’s progressive bent."
Man, it s**ks when conservative columnists come down with DBrooks disease, where liberal shibboleths are delivered with a bit more politeness, but with the same smug self assurance.
Let me reassure you Jonah - we're well aware that Newt has activist government tendencies. I guess you never had occasion to do any auto body work - if so, you'd understand that sometimes, the only way to smooth out a dent is to hammer with equal force, in the opposite direction.
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