It’s a bit jarring. I never thought I’d see the day when a politician attacks free lunches given to financially needy kids in schools. But now — in the latest where 21st century conservatives are going after the “givens” long supported by BOTH parties — Rep. Paul Ryan has gone after giving free lunches to schoolkids: (See UPDATE BELOW: It now turns out that Ryan’s story never happened and he has had to walk it back)
In a speech he made at Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the country’s largest gathering of conservative leaders and activists, Thursday, he shared this story he heard from Eloise Anderson, who serves in the cabinet for Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker:
She once met a young boy from a poor family. And every day at school, he would get a free lunch from a government program. But he told Eloise he didn’t want a free lunch. He wanted his own lunch — one in a brown-paper bag just like the other kids’. He wanted one, he said, because he knew a kid with a brown-paper bag had someone who cared for him.
This is all ideological gobblydgook. Right: so somehow this story (unconfirmable) about one child means ALL CHILDREN who get free lunches feel this way — that they somehow see the free lunch as meaning their parents don’t care about them enough to put a peanut butter and jelly sandwich, chips and an apple in a brown bag.
If you believe that, let me tell you about a nice furry bunny that will plant candied eggs in hour house in April. ALSO:
1. So now if someone has their kid get a free lunch it means a parent doesn’t care for their kid?
2. I’ve been in HUNDREDS of schools over the past 24 years and talked to many, parents and educators and kids. I also covered education as one of my beast when I worked as a fulltime newspaper reporter. The kids who get free lunches are needy. Often their parents are out the door early in the morning and drop the kids off early to school, or are looking for jobs or were laid off.
3. I’ve personally known several families who had their kids on free lunches. The brown bags are OK if a parent wants to do it, but it’s not a hot lunch like they get at school and in some cases kids feel different if they can’t eat what their peers are are eating.
But the bottom line it’s yet one more attempt to take something that b-o-t-h parties supported because decent politicians who had compassion and cared about others felt it was necessary.
The problem here isn’t about parents who don’t care for their kids.
It’s about politicians who don’t care about kids and parents but only on pushing or creating new ideological hot buttons to perpetuate and expand their professional political careers.
UPDATE: It now turns out that Ryan — who has been fact and accuracy challenged in the past — used a story that never happened and he has had to walk it back:
But when Washington Post fact checker Glenn Kessler looked into that tale, he gave it “four pinocchios” because Anderson presented it out of context.
Kessler found Anderson told the story at a 2013 congressional hearing that Ryan chaired, and claimed she had spoken to the boy herself. Kessler notes her story closely paralleled an exchange from a book called “An Invisible Thread,” in which an executive offers to either give a young, homeless panhandler money to eat for the week or else make lunch for him each day. The boy insists on having his lunch made for him in a brown-paper bag, because that means “somebody cares” about him.
A spokesman for Anderson told Kessler that the secretary “misspoke” and was actually describing a television interview she had seen with Maurice Mazcyk, the boy described in the book. Kessler further noted that school lunch is not brought up in the book, which means Anderson inserted the program into the anecdote.
Ryan wrote Thursday on his Facebook page that he thanked Anderson for sharing her insights but regretted “failing to verify the original source of the story.”[Talking Points Memo]
But even that obscures the issue:
BOTH PARTIES have long supported offering free lunches to needy schoolkids. And NO MAINSTREAM POLITICIAN has ever suggested that a parent who has their kid get a free school lunch doesn’t care about their kid.
This is typical of what is occurring with 21st century conservatives as they go after all of the “givens” and try to deconstruct a safety net constructed over decades by b-o-t-h parties.
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.