raymond van de (laar) wrote in noircity, @ 2014-11-14 15:11:00 |
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Entry tags: | ! newspaper, c: raymond van de laar |
raymond van de laar's weekly satire column, in op-ed. friday issue of the daily herald.
Friday November 14, 1954 |
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HOMELESS PERSON TAKES BLAME FOR MURDER, SAVES THE DAY | |
Citizens Fear Social Ecosystem in Danger from Possible Endangerment of Homeless Population by RAYMOND VAN DE LAAR With the Navarro case already fading from the minds of Personville residents, the masses have turned to focus on the only fact they can recall from the trial: that somebody homeless did something bad. “Thank God,” said Velma Walters, 42, relatively informed citizen and resident of Riverside. “I was worried that I was going to have a name and a face to attribute this horrible murder to. And someone in my own neighborhood! Now that I know it was a homeless person, I feel so much better. That just makes so much more sense, you know?” Others across the town have expressed similar sentiments, glad that they can return to their regular program of fear that the homeless population might, en masse and without warning, break into their homes and shoot their wives. Popular discussion has turned its gaze northwest, to Cardboard City. “I just don’t understand,” declared Paige Whitehead, Student Council member at Personville High, to a murmur of agreement among her classmates. “They really ought to have homes, and money. Why don’t they just get some? There are millions of dollars in the United States. That’s plenty for everyone. My dad brings home two thousand dollars a month. All they really need is a couple few hundred, right? How hard could that possibly be? I think it would really be a good thing if they had homes and food and money, is all I want to say.” Whitehead is renowned on the cheerleading team for being a very kind and generous girl. Justine Rogers, 36, Quinney Heights socialite and loving wife, disagrees. “Honestly, they ought to be happy with what they have. I hear cardboard homes are much more cost-effective, in any case. My cousin down in Greenburg was thinking of building one for her dog,” said Rogers, from her perch on an armchair resting on an imported rug, supposedly handwoven in a country called Persia. “And everyone knows happiness is found in the simple things, not in material goods. That they sit around all day and waste valuable time and energy coveting what we have is only further evidence that they are not people of the highest caliber, if you ask me.” Rogers hopes that her husband will buy her another rug for Christmas, this time from Mesopotamia. |
More than just Rogers would be hesitant to say that Cardboard City residents ought to have homes, albeit for entirely different reasons. Lately, local government has been equally preoccupied with the future of the homeless in Personville. “The number of homeless people currently residing in this city worries me deeply,” commented Mauricio Hahn, 54, bureaucrat. “By the look of the last census, by 1960 there will not be enough residents of Cardboard City to provide scapegoats for every upper-middle class person in Personville, and this is not a privilege that we want to reserve for the upper class. We believe in equal opportunity in this town.” Hahn followed up his statement with a call to action, complete with a rousing speech in front of a gathered crowd, where the ratio of staged applauder to curious passerby was at least 2:1. When asked who was being called to action, Hahn generously referred us to Olivia Hu, 34, generic government official, who claimed that this was an issue to be looked at by the mayor, who could not comment at the time, but one of her secretaries explained that many of these social problems depended on the opinions of the people. When the people, in turn, were questioned, they revealed that they were familiar with the issue and had heard something about it during a speech from Mauricio Hahn when they were on their way to the grocery store. The lack of enough eligible scapegoats in modern cities (either because of rising non-homeless populations or from the transferral of homeless people into non-cardboard homes), dubbed “the homelessness problem,” is nothing new at a national level. Cities like Seattle, Memphis and Dallas have been struggling with the issue for decades; in fact, in 1942 the government of New York City, in a staggering act of charity, shipped over 20,000 homeless people to various towns across the country. “Look, the homeless are an essential part of our natural ecosystem,” said Ezekiel Wallace, 43, professional seat-warmer, aspiring biologist and resident of Fairview. “They play a specific and necessary role in the way things work, and getting rid of them is about as good an idea as getting rid of insects. Because insects are -- everything eats things that eat them, you follow? You know what I mean? If we don’t have homelessness, what are we going to do? What if my son robbed a bank and went to jail? No problem, he fell into the wrong circles. But what if we didn’t have the homeless? What am I gonna do, blame my kid?” |