I heard this ad on the radio Friday night. I was heading to the store to buy some food in my not very new car, and thinking about having to buckle down and do my taxes, when I heard this conversation on the radio:
Not only do lots of people have misconceptions about who’s eligible for SNAP benefits, but they also have lots of questions. Thus, this concept attempts to bring some clarity through a playful interaction between a serious announcer from USDA and an everyday mom.
Music underneath
MALE ANNCR: (clears throat) The following message is from the U.S. Department of
Agriculture. Did you know millions of Americans with low-income can get help buying food?
Introducing SNAP. It helps you eat right when money’s tight…
MOM: Wait. Excuse me! Did you say SNAP?
MALE ANNCR: (taken out of his rhythm) Uh, yea. SNAP is the new name for the federal Food Stamp Program. Lots of people with low income qualify for SNAP but don’t know it. If you qualify, you‘ll get a card you can use to buy all sorts of foods, including fruits and vegetables.
MALE ANNCR: (Resumes announcer tone) SNAP offers help to all kinds of people…
MOM: So, wait… can I be eligible if I have a job?
MALE ANNCR: Yes.
MOM: But what if I have a car?
MALE ANNCR: Well, you may still qualify….
MOM: But … I own my own house. So can I still qualify?
MALE ANNCR: (laughs.) Yes, you might.
MALE ANNCR: Ok. (announcer tone) To learn more about SNAP, call …
MOM: Hold on. Let me get a pen.
MALE ANNCR: Ok. (understanding laugh) Call 1-800-221-5689. 1-800-221-5689. That’s 1-800-
221-5689. SNAP. Putting healthy food within reach.
MOM: Hey, thanks!
MALE ANNCR: You’re welcome.
The PSA has apparently been around for a couple of years, but this was the first time I had heard it. It’s not the easiest thing in the world to qualify for SNAP (though it should be more difficult), but the ad makes it sound like it’s a perfectly mainstream, middle class thing to get on the government handout dole. It’s a nice little message if you intend to normalize dependence.
Update: I just noticed this line on the SNAP web site, above the section that includes the transcript of the ad above:
Only scripts (not sound files) are available for paid radio ads due to licensing arrangements.
That means that the ad is not, as I originally thought, and Public Service Announcement (PSA). Radio stations only air PSAs when they have no paying commercials to fill a slot. PSAs run for free. But this ad is a paid ad. USDA has evidently hired a buyer to buy time to run this ad nationally. They’re using our tax dollars to advertise and normalize the entitlement spending of our tax dollars.
Having seen people buy stuff with food stamps and/or those newer food stamp cards, and then get into a new vehicle, I have observed firsthand how America has redefined “poverty.”
Remember that these folks then drive to their Section 8 apartment where the typical rent is over $1000/month. They have cell phones, of course, and a plasma big screen TV.
Is this universal for the “poor?” No, but fairly common. To continue the redefinition: lower middle class is considered “poor” in many circles. The “growing income disparity” is often defined as the growing gap between “the rich and the poor,” when actually it’s between the rich and affluent and the solidly middle class, with the poor (at about 15% now, thanks to Obama) not even in that equation.
Wasn’t the point of Cloward – Piven to overwhelm the system with welfare recipients, get as many people on the dole as possible, and get power forever? Or, am I thinking of an old episode of Pinky & the Brain?
I noticed the woman didn’t ask if she needs ID to qualify.
Oso Pardo, That’s exactly what Cloward-Piven is all about. Overload and crash the system so the socialists can come in and save the day by rebuilding a socialist utopia.
Good catch on that. I wish I had the audio – she’s very chirpy about qualifying for welfare.
Good old Obama, buying his re-election one voter at a time. And yes, this is Cloward-Piven, bottom up, inside out.
Our only hope is that their numbers are still slightly less than half, but we’re at the tipping point and the scale is tipping more towards entitlement driven slavery every day.
I’m very worried about November.
when my husband was first starting his business, I kept the kids fed, but they liked visiting their friends in the section 8 project: the food was fancier- packaged chips, for one.
What gets me is the the Right does not fight this nonsense. They let the Left take some moral high ground on poverty, and the Right does not drive them off it.
“Oh, there are so many people who are poor and struggling!”
“Well, don’t most of the poor effing DESERVE to be poor?”
“…offering a premium on incapacity, I shall now endeavor to fail.” –
Jane Eyre
– in hardworking Texas; in the Lazy Bay Area…not so much.
Hey, life’s a SNAP … when someone else pays for your food, housing, utilities, cell phone, broadband, education, medical care and birth control.
“all sorts of foods, including fruits and vegetables.”
But why waste money on crap like “fruits and vegetables” when you can get stuff your kids want, like Oreos and Doritos and Coke? Frozen broccoli…ice cream…eh, someone else is paying for it. Food stamps are just corporate welfare. The manufacturers and retailers will lobby louder than the users if anyone ever tries to restrict food stamp usage to reasonably nutritious food.
I got an ad about “get your free gov’t-paid cell phone” a few weeks ago in one of those “coupon packs” that get mailed to occupant. I wish I’d saved it to investigate further–must be a good profit on handing out gov’t-paid cell phones–but I got angry and threw it away.