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Well, with all this talk about poverty and its impact that's been goin' on at the G21 lately, I was set to thinkin' about how TV must be very different for po' folks than it is for the rest of us. Let me give ya'll what I came up with so far:
You or me, we see a commercial for a Ford Explorer, the latest deal at Kentucky Fried Chicken, or the electronics sale they havin' down at the local Computer Superstore, we thinks thangs along the lines of "What a load of crap!" or "Mebbe I'll get me some uh that.." or "I'll hit the 'MUTE' button." But po' folks are prob'bly set to thinkin' about how they won't have the money to buy that crap in a million years and is-that-the-repo'-man-outside comin'-to-get-my-ride? cause they ain't made the payments. If'n it was me, I'd be gettin' durn mad about this time about always bein' shown stuff I cain't have.
My point is, we ain't all just hangin' out down here drinkin' tall boys and watchin' the WFF Smackdown --- though there ain't a danged thing wrong with watchin' "Smackdown," mind you! You drive through this here park in Austin, you're as likely to see mounted satellite dishes and Blazers as you is to see Harleys.
We can look down our noses, too, when referrin' to the "Yo Boys" or the "Jerry Springer Show" and the kinds of folks that appear thereon.
It's also just as easy for us to forget that only two thangs separate us from "the po' folks": luck and money. You know what I'm gettin' at, "There but for the grace of God..."
A lot of the po' folks I know is just like you and me. Really. Except for the facts of that luck and money. They think all the same thoughts, breathe the same danged polluted air, hopes they kids have a MUCH BETTER life than they did.
They are NOT poor because they committed some crime or have some character flaw. They are poor because they make minimum wage and still have to pay rent and feed they children. OR they are poor because of a layoff that has them living without that paycheck of many of our own paycheck-to-paycheck lives. OR they are poor because of the exorbitant hospital bills they gottah pay each month because they mother, wife, child, needed an operation last winter. Where's the sin or flaw in that? Certainly not with that poor person. "There but by the grace of God..."
Thusly, I have concluded that TV not only shows po' folks that they cain't have all the great stuff that makes Amurrica the Number One place to be in the modern world, it also sends the subtle-as-a-flyin'-mallet message that they are not wanted in the Land of Free, Home of the Brave. They just don't fit. They don't smile enough and say, "Have a nice day" enough.
Mebbe that's why TV even has shows like "Jerry Springer," so's po' folks can see that there are other po' folks even more screwed up and screwed over than they are. It's just a thought...
KRYSTAL IN THE BACKYARD WITH A POKER - A danged big part of life here in the trailer park is watching TV. Ever'body does it and then ever'body talks about it. Besides Sports, which is broadcast on TV, if you don't know what's goin' on in the world of TV, you got nuthin' to talk about in Amurrica. Ya'll know that as well as I do, but I thought I'd come out and say it anyways. We are a TV nation.
Now I know a lottah ya'll, when you think about a trailer park at all, you be thinkin' "poor, white trash." You do! But I know a lot of folks who lives in doublewides that might be white, and trash, but they ain't necessarily poor. Some of 'em got they trailers tricked out like palaces, complete with sundecks and backyard pools and hot tubs. Yeah, you oughtah come down here to Bubba Land sometime and check it out.
My point is, a trailer park is as "mixed use" a community as anywheres else in ex- or sub-urban in Amurrica. We can be just as snooty, too, when it comes to pontificatin' about what the lives of po' folks is like.
So gettin' back to my thinkin' about television and the poor: Ya'll have prob'bly noticed, as have I, that there ain't that many po' folks represented on TV. In fact, if you look at most of the streets on "Providence," "Buffy the Vampire Slayer," "West Wing" or "NYPD Blue," you'd definitely get the impression there ain't any po' folks in Amurrica. The only ones you evah do really see is when they is tryin' to show that the cops or the heroine are entering a seedy neighborhood. Then most of the po' folks there is are either a) hookers, b) heroin addicts, or c) broken down old drunks sleepin' in a alley. Except for the drunks, almost all the po' folks are also Black. You used to have some Hispanic po' folks, but that went away about the same time they cancelled "Chico and The Man."
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