Put Us in Mental Institutions, Please!
O'Rourke, P. J.
THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL. 22, NO. 12 / DECEMBER 1989 P. J. O'Rourke PUT US IN MENTAL INSTITUTIONS, PLEASE! A Washington homebody reports on the antics of those perennially indignant "Housing...
...Twent back to have another look at the demo, passing a number of homeless on the way...
...There was an Asian guy, about fifty, behind the counter...
...homes "affordable," instituted rent ceilings which have led to the destruction of rental stock in the less affluent sections of the city while providing a cost-of-living subsidy to rich, unfeeling conservatives like myself...
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...Just try throwing an evicted crack addict at a Russian radar installation, is what I say...
...Martha Burt for the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S...
...As usual, they were joined by greedy celebrities who aren't content with fame and money and want a reputation for moral goodness, too...
...A government house-building orgy won't work because one-third of the homeless are crazy and will jump out the windows and one-third are screwed up on drink and drugs and will sell the plumbing...
...Indignant Lefties don't care if a policy works...
...And some of those old would-be hippies themselves, faded jeans straining beneath increasing paunches, hair still tied into a pony tail in the back but gone forever on the top...
...Remember how many pretty girls were in the antiwar movement twenty years ago...
...O ctober 7 witnessed the "National March for Housing Now...
...And the Savings and Loan bailou t seems to have replaced the moon shot as the Indignant Left's pet if/then social engineering theorem...
...Department of Agriculture—the only nationwide probability-based study that's been done on the subject...
...Housing advocates, community activists, and welfare rights organizers led the crowd in chants: Apartments, yes...
...I hesitate to even mention these two encounters...
...Second, the Indignants don't want homelessness to go away (though I'll give them the benefit of the doubt and say they aren't conscious of this...
...The facts are simple...
...It's not that looks matter, per se...
...People advocating programs to solve a problem caused by the programs those people advocated—this is as ridiculous as letting lawyers make laws...
...Best of all, there were hardly any pretty girls at the rally...
...It doesn't interfere with any other software you use...
...The march organizers weren't even pretending that their proposed depredation of tax dollars would be "fair" or that the recipients of the largess would be "deserving...
...We haven't thought of it in terms of 'The Homeless.' " Around noon the demonstrators traipsed down Constitution Avenue and came to a halt, standing dully before a large sound stage near the Capitol reflecting pool...
...ECS, Ilion, NY floppies or hard disk and 256K memory...
...For instance, the march got thirty-three column inches in the next day's Post, but in the Section D Metro pages, not with the real news...
...No, m'am, you're not...
...from New York...
...He had an overnight bag with him and a pile of newspapers and magazines...
...When the New Exodus people arrived in Washington they promptly got into a fistfight at the Center for Creative Non-Violence, the fight apparently having something to do with disposition of royalty proceeds from the sale of "Homeless" T-shirts...
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...The International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers even brought along its kilted bagpipe band...
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...This was amazing...
...I told him, yes, I was covering the housing march...
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...In some ways, it's better when a policy fails...
...T he actual "National March for I Housing Now...
...And you may not believe this," he shouted, "but even in little Alliance, Ohio, we have 200 people in our shelter...
...Now Spot won't leave us alone and is going to have to be tied out in the yard...
...If the government can find $160 billion to . . ." But, of course, the government couldn't find $160 billion and ended up taking it from you and me...
...I'm from Ohio...
...Angry black poverty pests making a life and a living off the misfortunes of others...
...YOU CAN LOCATE ANY DOCUMENT IN SECONDS...
...There was a fenced-off area beside the stage, a sort of celebrity pen, where additional fairly well-known people were being kept...
...American MIAs—still alive in Vietnam • How one defense contractor "lost" over 1,000 classified documents on the Stealth bomber • House Armed Services Committee invites Soviet Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev to testify against the Bush Defense Budget...
...I went into a storeto get my own copy of the Post...
...I don't know why these people were mad at Barry...
...Despite a huge protest on their behalf just around the corner, they remained at their posts, cadging change...
...Homelessness is also a splendid way to indict the American system and all Western civilization and its individualism and freedom...
...I didn't believe this...
...Then, if you want to keep it, send us $99...
...C oolly considered over lunch (a pheasant under glass and caviar sandwich with a six-pack of Dom Perignon, because I mean to spend this money before it all goes to build slums), the most prominent feature of the "Housing Now...
...E. Fuller Torrey's investigations of the psychiatric, economic, and behavior problems of the homeless...
...Charge my...
...It's the result of mental patient deinstitutionalization, de facto legalization of drug use, elimination of intellectual standards in public education, destruction of urban neighborhoods through infringement on property rights, and a lot of other stuff that the Perennially Indignant themselves hold dear...
...The plump, scrubbed union folk, enjoying a subsidized bus trip with their softball buddies, were as out of place as yarmulkes on a motorcycle gang...
...It was a crowd numbering—as NBC News, with TV's keen eye for hard facts, put it—'between 40,000 and 250,000 people...
...Visa ^ Mastercard ^ American Express I Card # Exp...
...Earnest neophyte Marxists, hands grubby from littering the Mall with ill-Xeroxed tracts and eyes glazed from dialectical epiphanies...
...And this," he looked around him, "isn't it...
...most recently, of Modern Manners (Atlantic Monthly Press...
...Homelessness" is not the result of a lack of warm, dry abodes in the United States...
...Over on the other side of the crowd I heard somebody shouting through a bullhorn that he was from Alliance, Ohio...
...One fellow was sitting athwart the sidewalk on 12th Street near the Old Post Office building...
...And any time you don'tthink The American Sentinel is worth every penny, I'll refund your money—no questions asked...
...Alliance is a pleasant, semi-rural town in the northeastern part of the state...
...Mainstream politicians served the homeless with a lip or two but kept an arm's length between themselves and march honchos Mitch Snyder and Donna Brazile (you remember what a boost she gave to the Dukakis campaign...
...Of Thomas Paine's "natural and imprescriptible rights of man .. . liberty, property, security, and resistance to oppression," the Indignants She is also, like many women, under the impression that mankind is as rational and pragmatic as women are...
...The"Housing Now...
...She is also, like many women, under the impression that mankind is as rational and pragmatic as women are...
...The demonstrators seemed sincere in their desire to solve the various habitation cost and dwelling availability problems we have in the United States...
...The rest of the demonstrators seemed to come from normal homes, that is, the kind of homes that demonstrators usually come from—homes where they had sufficient resources to becomehalf-educated and adequate leisure to hate their parents...
...Young would-be hippies dressed exactly like old would-be hippies used to dress (remarkable how behind the times the avant garde has gotten...
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...Any policy-maker with more than a 30-watt bulb in his head laughs at the "Housing Now...
...TUrnout was a heartening 40 percent of the organizers' advance estimates...
...He advocates more federal money for housing and everything else...
...Demonstrators pressed in to catch a glimpse of Casey Kasem, Susan Dey, Rita Coolidge, Jon Voight and to try to figure out which one of them was which...
...A lot of quid pro quo was also in the air...
...At the disco ten years ago...
...We live in one room...
...Since this is 500 percent more than any serious estimate, housing advocates seem to have created 2,400,000 cases of homelessness virtually overnight...
...It's just that pretty girls are always on the cutting edge of social trends...
...message was simply and entirely "give me some money...
...Press coverage was slavering yet perfunctory...
...It's hard to imagine anyone who had a close look at these demonstrators ever voting for a social program again...
...marchers, whose snake oil will ensure that in time we might all be made homeless...
...Heck, what's a family for...
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...Shelters, no...
...I am not making this up...
...He spotted my press tags and said, in compassionate if barely comprehensible English, "Oh, is Saturday, beautiful day—you must work...
...But "progressives" don't like progress...
...Well, we know where two of them are," said my friend...
...I've got relatives near there...
...I NO RISK 18 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989...
...in Washington, D.C...
...Where the pretty girls are is where the country is headed," said my friend...
...One lives with you and one lives with me, and they're home...
...For the Perennially Indignant Left, homelessness is a fine rallying flag under which they can all gather and show off how much they care...
...Congressman Phil Crane I The best intelligence network in Washington for anybody who wants to keep track of the radical left—that's what The American Sentinel has been for 18 years...
...She was a big, resentful woman—the kind that's always behind the counter at the Department of Motor Vehicles when you go to renew your car registration...
...TO ORDER CALL TOLL-FREE 1-800-443-0445 OR MAIL COUPON MI MIN NM MI MI MN IM• MINI NMI The American Sentinel 325 Pennsylvania Ave., SE, Suite 272 Washington, DC 20003 I Enter my No-Risk Introductory Subscription...
...He knows about Thomas J. Main's and Dr...
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...The law of supply and demand tells us that when the price of something is artificially set below market level there will soon be none of that thing left—as you may have noticed the last time you tried to buy something for notning...
...By the way," I said, "where are the pretty girls...
...T n certain ways, the "Housing Now...
...Oh, yes...
...Congressman, let me pay for this little young 'un...
...Virtually every female at the march was a bowser...
...The organized labor contingent carried banners calling for a uniform national building code, increased factory mass-production of modular homes, stricter Taft-Hartley anti-featherbedding regulation, and a federal right-to-work law...
...Though, come to think of it, if the crack addict is wired-up and psychotic enough, it might work...
...The labor unions were also on hand, but their members stood away to one side in well-pressed sport clothes and snappy nylon windbreakers embossed with the names of their locals...
...No matter what somebody has done to himself or to others, he doesn't deserve to freeze in the gutter, is the Indignants' almost reasonable argument...
...Rent control has got to go...
...We're homeless...
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...I'd never heard the 200 figure...
...march was its beggary...
...Thus, she's forever asking silly questions which go right to the heart of the matter...
...Big Resentful said, "Five babies died on the walk from New York City...
...And thousands of homeless men and women waved signs reading "JAIL US, WE'RE DRUNK" and "WE ARE CRAZY...
...didn't have thouP. J. O'Rourke is author...
...Our shelter was put up for people whose houses burn down, things like that...
...We're sick of living in a ditch, Give real estate tax breaks back to the rich...
...If I don't agree The American Senti- I • nel is Washington's best watchdog of the radical left, I can get a full refund—no 11 questions asked...
...First, the homeless problem isn't what they say it is and they know it...
...The network broadcasts made sympathetic noises but mostly en passant on the way to the day's meatier stories...
...sands of homeless men and women or even hundreds, as far as I could see...
...Even angrier feminists doing their best to feminize poverty before the blacks use it all up...
...They were all present and accounted for: • World Council of Churches sensible-shoe types who have self-righteousness the way some people have bad breath...
...But Mayor Barry has been accused of taking drugs...
...rr hat morning, as I was going out I the door of my own housing—which is handsome, spacious, and frankly underpriced due to the District of Columbia Housing Act of 1985 which, in the name of keeping D.C...
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...This was grounds for arrest...
...The crowd was addressed with much bruiting of homelessness numbers, 3 million being the favorite...
...But you're working on Saturday, too," I said...
...I ran into a journalist friend on the Mall and he and I pursued this line of inquiry as assiduously as our happy home lives allow...
...They would replace the democratic paradigm of the state as a free association of equals with the totalitarian paradigm of the state as a family...
...one of the most authoritative and informative newsletters on the activities of our adversaries on the left...
...Your housing may be as bad as your family planning, but you're not homeless...
...The Perennially Indignant Lefties have good reasons for not putting forth substantive programs...
...As I was going out the door, my girlfriend said, "Will there be lots of people from South Carolina at the housing march...
...A Washington homebody reports on the antics of those perennially indignant "Housing Now...
...An intelligent policy-maker (we're not talking about Democrats here) is familiar with the homeless population figures generated by Dr...
...And the Indignants are Mom, of course, because they care...
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...The fire is new to me," he said...
...He's seen William Tucker's regression analysis on the relationship of unemployment, rent control, public housing, and other factors to housing shortages...
...If government is going to flash the cash at homelessness, I'd like at least some of the money to go to people who hold jobs...
...0 $49 check enclosed...
...No, darling, there won't be any people from South Carolina at the housing march—they're too busy building homes...
...That is why your publication is so valuable...
...In our prosperous, peaceful, and happy era, homelessness is one of the few undeniable (and telegenic...
...You can't find things when you need them...
...Congressman, please can't you see You gotta stop giving me that AFDC I did the lovin' I had the fun Mr...
...I guess the homeless want those drugs back...
...You know how some events are too amazing for fiction...
...he smiled widely...
...They were then regaledby the moderately famous: Richie Havens, Martin Sheen, Dick Gregory, Olatunji, Mary Wilson, Governor Dick Celeste of Ohio...
...Together these people constitute America's only true, permanent underclass—the Perennially Indignant Left...
...panhandler approach to the problems of the homeless...
...Or is that the male oppressor in me speaking...
...Date Signature 1 NAME ADDRESS CITY/STATE,71P 213.11 L =I MI= I= MN EM ^ ISM IIMII a NM NM Editor & Publisher P.S...
...Box 228, Somerville, MA 02143 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 17 believe only in security...
...Well, the Asian and the sidewalk squatter were too real for journalism...
...At the pre-march rally beside the Washington Monument I did hear one woman say she was homeless...
...Seven days...
...As Senator Jesse Helms said, "the average American would be appalled if he were suddenly to discover what is being done to his country and its principles by extreme left-wing forces...
...My girlfriend doesn't pay much attention to political activism, considering it as interesting as growing algae in a jar...
...For the price of one B-2 bomber . . ." began most if not all the speeches...
...I said, "Huh...
...On Monday I called the Alliance town office and was put right through to Mayor Carr who sounded puzzled...
...On Wall Street five years ago...
...T he big, resentful woman I men- I tioned earlier went on to extol a group of what appeared to be just plain street bums called "The New Exodus Marchers" who had walked to D.C...
...As if there were a redemption center someplace where you could make a straight up trade of civil felicity for national defense...
...It just goes to show what the private sector can do...
...The marchers packed themselves into the Mall from 3rd to 4th Streets (packed themselves very tightly, if we accept the 250,000 figure...
...Since we began as "The Pink Sheet on the Left" back in 1971, the best informed Conservatives in America have relied on us as a watchdog of the left wing...
...UnionSquareware, P.O...
...This was supernatural...
...The only break in the day's smug outrage and furious self-congratulation was a round of catcalls for Washington Mayor Marion Barry...
...He'd set out a paper cup primed with a few quarters and was listening to his Sony Walkman while he read the Washington Post...
...But I di16 THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR DECEMBER 1989 gress...
...Quit your whining, Stop your dithers, Sell public housing to the highest bidders...
...The mothers miscarried but they kept on walking...
...The only policy that would benefit the sane and worthwhile homeless would be one that lowered the real price of housing through expanded development, improved technology, increased prosperity—in other words, through progress...
...Or return it and you owe us nothing...
...Discover how Liberals in Congress have made their own foreign policy—and how it conflicts with America's...
...Every two weeks we break stories the Establishment media ignore or bury, like...
...It was as though we, as a nation, hadmade the mistake of feeding the dog at the table...
...And more power to them...
...You know," she said, "where Hurricane Hugo just destroyed everybody's house...
...College bohos dressed in black to show how gloomy the world is when you're a 19-year-old rich kid...
...Reporting like that made the Washington Post call me "the right wing's answer to Abbie Hoffman...
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...march was a great success...
...social injustices left...
...She was co-chairhuman of something-or-other, and she was declaiming from the podium: "I've got five kids...
...The rest have primarily economic problems, but we can keep giving them freehousing forever and it won't help...
...The UAW, AFSCME, Steelworkers, and various building trades each had neat stacks of professionally made picket signs...
Vol. 22 • December 1989 • No. 12
