Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Feeding the Wild Animals Some Plagiarism


Photo from Citizens for a Free Pennsylvania, dated July 18, 2012. 


The NH House internal email system strikes again. Rep. Romeo Danais sent out a message to his all of his fellow legislators yesterday. In part:

Here is a short lesson in irony: 
The Food Stamp Program (aka SNAP, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), administered by the U.S. Dept. of Agriculture, is proud to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps over to 47 million people this year. 
Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of Interior, asks us “Please do not feed the animals.” 
Their stated reason for the policy is “The animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves.”

Representative Danais sent this out under his name, with his own yahoo.com address. It does give one the impression that he wrote this himself, since he didn't attribute it to anyone else.

He didn't write it. This right wing meme has been spread around the internet since last summer. If you Google "short lesson in irony" you'll find a number of forums where this has been spread around, from the loathsome toads at free republic to ChristianForums (??) to Smith and Wesson Forums which may well be where Rep. Danais found it.

I can't imagine why Representative Danais found this "lesson" amusing. According to the Children's Defense Fund, last year 44,000 children in the state of NH received SNAP benefits. Should we let those "little animals" starve? Have we no prisons, no workhouses?

And why in the world would Rep. Danais want to take credit for having written this? It's not at all  clever, and it's certainly not humane.



Big h/t to Tuck at Miscellany Blue.

No comments:

Post a Comment