It is rumored that yellow corn is unpopular in Africa because it is associated with foreign food aid and indicates poverty. Yet no one is discarding yellow corn whilst demanding white corn or brown rice.
Puerto Rico is a completely different disaster. Chronic financial mismanagement has driven the territory to insolvency with this man-made disaster fostering a culture of dependency. That's why we've heard the increasing demands for financial relief. That is until recent natural disasters brought poignant hardship to each and every resident. No power. Limited communication. Water and food in short often non-existent supply.
And yet.
They turn their noses up at freely offered food, brought to them by Uncle Sam's foreign aid version of Uber Eats. Why? Because it is not acceptable to the delicate, refined palettes of the Puerto Rican gourmet.
What was this odious fare? Potted meat.
Many a nanny-stater agrees with the not-so-famished in Puerto Rico turning their noses up at a meat spread requiring no refrigeration. Or so we hear from their tweets, bandwidth limited not by character restrictions but the time demands of debating which is the better pinot, noir or gris, between sampling canapés. But here in the Southland, where these food packages originated, many a callous handed redneck has made a working lunch of potted meat on saltines. Many dismiss this as folklore or nostalgia gone the way of peanuts-in-the-Coke and certainly those hardworking rednecks have been displaced by hardworking slave-wagers from much further south. Nonetheless...
In today's world our handouts are supposed to be culturally appropriate, by which the nanny means "sensitive to the culture of the recipient, not the giver" and should be quickly withdrawn and replaced with something more desired if any recipient finds the gift "demeaning." Maybe so, but it sounds like there are a lot of folks in Puerto Rico who aren't very hungry and have plenty of time to complain and demand entitlements. Or maybe they are nostalgic too.
Puerto Rico is a completely different disaster. Chronic financial mismanagement has driven the territory to insolvency with this man-made disaster fostering a culture of dependency. That's why we've heard the increasing demands for financial relief. That is until recent natural disasters brought poignant hardship to each and every resident. No power. Limited communication. Water and food in short often non-existent supply.
And yet.
They turn their noses up at freely offered food, brought to them by Uncle Sam's foreign aid version of Uber Eats. Why? Because it is not acceptable to the delicate, refined palettes of the Puerto Rican gourmet.
What was this odious fare? Potted meat.
Many a nanny-stater agrees with the not-so-famished in Puerto Rico turning their noses up at a meat spread requiring no refrigeration. Or so we hear from their tweets, bandwidth limited not by character restrictions but the time demands of debating which is the better pinot, noir or gris, between sampling canapés. But here in the Southland, where these food packages originated, many a callous handed redneck has made a working lunch of potted meat on saltines. Many dismiss this as folklore or nostalgia gone the way of peanuts-in-the-Coke and certainly those hardworking rednecks have been displaced by hardworking slave-wagers from much further south. Nonetheless...
In today's world our handouts are supposed to be culturally appropriate, by which the nanny means "sensitive to the culture of the recipient, not the giver" and should be quickly withdrawn and replaced with something more desired if any recipient finds the gift "demeaning." Maybe so, but it sounds like there are a lot of folks in Puerto Rico who aren't very hungry and have plenty of time to complain and demand entitlements. Or maybe they are nostalgic too.
"Ev'rything's free in America!"
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