I hate government handouts, now give me my subsidy paycheck!

'Party of Parasites' author took $1M in farm subsidies - KansasCity.com:

The Raytown farmer who posted a sign on a semi-truck trailer accusing Democrats of being the “Party of Parasites” received more than $1 million in federal crop subsidies since 1995.

But David Jungerman says the payouts don’t contradict the sign he put up in a corn field in Bates County along U.S. 71 Highway.

“That’s just my money coming back to me,” Jungerman, 72, said Monday. “I pay a lot in taxes. I’m not a parasite.”

After a story about Jungerman’s trailer ran in Sunday’s Star, however, some readers called him a hypocrite for criticizing others for getting government help while taking government subsidies paid for by taxpayers.

Jungerman said he put up the sign to protest people who pay no taxes, but, “Always have their hand out for whatever the government will give them” in social programs.

So there's the logic: if you don't pay taxes, you shouldn't get any government handouts.

But if you do pay some taxes, you're entitled to a million dollars in government handouts, easly more than 100 times what you might have paid.

makes perfect sense to me.

ad. This guy may be an idiot, but that in no way justifies the burning of said trailer.  The idiots who did so should be caught and punished for arson, regardless.

on "pop" culture

I wrote the following as a bit of a rant to a guy basically trying to put an end to the standard boilerplate argument that "classical is just better than pop", in that he attacks the arguers by presenting the exceptions of excellence in pop culture rather than acknowledging that they are often the exceptions. In a sense, he sets up his opposition to fail by not recognizing that the very word itself, "popular", is loaded with negative feelings and connotations in those of us who generally have left it.

Walmart teacher? (Pop/Classical, first footnote) - Sandow:

I think the real issue is that very use of the word "popular". It may have a denotation that includes all forms of culture that happen to be popular in the sense that classical is not, but it has a connotation that is what is emotionally charged - that of the mass market culture, spoon-fed to the masses, manufactured to be liked and sold as commodity, interchangeable from the next. 1 hour on "pop" radio demonstrates that easily, regardless of any aesthetic argument over quality.

When you say "popular", of course we're going to think of Britney Spears and Lady Gaga, and all that is "wrong" with the image they present, the culture of greed and self-centeredness they represent. They represent to us WHY we no longer have easy access to the craft we love.

When put to the challenge of it, you immediately respond by mentioning the exceptions to that mass-market culture, as if we didn't already know them. Trust me I know plenty in the "pop" culture that I love (really well played blues and jazz, progressive rock from King Crimson through Yes to the contemporary Dream Theater, Ayreon, Flower Kings, and Marillion), and an addiction to the 80s pop of my youth that will never go away. Of course we can find good quality and craftsmanship in "pop" network tv and film (Scrubs, at least through season 7, is an excellent example).

Your last paragraph in my reply in a sense gave up the whole argument: if you can rate a classical work, performance, or recording to be of higher quality than another, in the same sense that you can rate a "pop" work to be of a higher quality, then why can't you thus treat both to be of the same culture, that is "music", and rate them?

Yes it is wrong to say that all classical music must by its very nature be better than the best of the pop world (say, The Beatles), but when using the word "popular" without some refining context, you evoke in your readership the images not of The Beatles or the many other fine examples of craftsmanship in Rock, Dance, Jazz and Blues, Country, and even Rap that are out there (ok, I'm thinking about Weird Al's White and Nerdy, but there you go). Rather, you bring up the image of the marketed "pop diva", selling sex and celebrity rather than music and art, where every aspect of their life hits the airwaves as unavoidably as the commercials for a reality tv show, and evoking strong distaste to the point of nausea.

As the saying goes, "choose your words carefully". By presenting only the dichotomy of "Classical" vs "Popular" to the classical audience, you automatically bring up images of the best of one to compete with the worst of the other, and neither your audience, the cultural world, nor your argument are really well served.

And in fact it would go the other way around - to the music lover who happens to enjoy well crafted popular music but knows little of classical, you will likely bring up the image of The Beatles with all of their sonorities and production quality to compete with the "pops" station that plays Eine Kliene Nachtmusic and Pachebel's Canon 37 times in a row.

Another chap does mention how the Classical world has already filtered out its junk over the last 300 years, though I think he's missing a bit because part of the classical-v-pop argument does have to do with the role of contemporary classical (if such a thing exists) in the marketplace.