This week's New Yorker cover: bad taste

This week's 'New Yorker' cover is an illustration of a real estate agent 'showing' a cardboard box to a homeless man:



Harmless fun? No, because the subtext of, "Properties are so outrageously expensive, even the HOMELESS have an agent! *snicker, snicker*", is a gross oversimplification of how people end up on the street. What about mental health? What about inadequate social services? Are class stereotypes somehow more respectable than religious ones, or racial ones?

A nearby awning printed with "Rich & White Unaffordable Properties" awkwardly attempts to make everything PC by saying, "We, in our Upper West Side apartments, can laugh at ourselves too!" but it's not a two-way street. Making a joke out of those less fortunate in any way, shape, or form is just ugly, and the end result is base and atypical for the usually-sophisticated TNY.

Raygun threw many crazy people on the street when he closed government mental hospitals.

Many people say that after Raygun was elected, the homeless population surged.

who defunded mental health care and closed many of California's clinics and hospitals- though the worst damage was in fact done during the years Reagan was President.

And, yes- there was a large surge of homeless people... where else were they supposed to go?

LA County Jail, that's where. It is now considered by many in the healthcare profession to be the largest psychiatric hospital in the world.

In the early 80's, I worked in a small town which had a federally-funded "half-way" house for outpatients from a nearby mental health facility. This was an old hotel that was the place these poor people would go when released as they had no where else to go, and reports were that most would stay a few weeks then go off to other places...few ever stuck around. That was until Raygun.

Those service cuts in the early 80's not only shut down the hotel, but also stopped most the funding for treatment and education for these people. There were still people coming and going from the mental health center (state-funded) but now they were dumped on the streets and left to fend for themselves. Soon, the signs of the homeless and "bag ladies" became common. I remember one holiday season where we had to help a young 20 year old woman who was living under a bridge to get a decent meal...and we caught crap from many locals for doing it because "if you do it to one, they'll all want it". It's like these people were animals. It was and still is my picture of the Raygun legacy.

Just like the unemployed, the homeless are hidden away these days. It's always their fault and any attempts to assist these people make those of us with a real heart "wimps".

Yes, this article is insulting, more along the lines that we've accept homelessness as a common sight on our landscape. Shameful.

Very depressing to see this degree of thoughtlessness from the New Yorker. :(

It is good to put it right in your face.

to homelessness. It made me sad for that kind of contrast. I never saw it as harmless fun.

We may experience class warfare in Amerila.

I think one of the arguments it's making about homelessness is that it's caused by real estate prices that are way to high.

The homeless guy appears to be a former middle class home owner or renter -- his belt is the tie he used to where around his neck, he has a ring of keys, which he either doesn't need anymore or are the keys to his office, and in his shopping cart is a tennis racket. He has been priced out of everything else, and now has to live in a box, but NY real estate values are so outrageous that even the boxes aren't free -- and they are expensive enough that a real estate agent can make a living off of selling them.

This is a commentary about outrageous real estate values, and it's showing middle class people who work for a living that they're not too far from taking a big step down the socio-economic ladder unless things straighten out.

It's not just NYC.

Partly because of home-owning is now seen more as an investment than an end to itself (and in part to our highly mobile population), by so many, prices have sky-rocketed - everyone who buys with the expectation of selling in 2-10 years expects a huge return on their investment. And in such a short period, you don't build up much equity in the first place, so it's crucial to get a good price or you end up losing money on the loan. Interest rates are so low right now it tempts people to buy at ridiculously high prices, and those who can, do.

I was looking to enter the housing/condo market here in Nashville. But as a single, making just below the median income, the mortgage I can afford would either mean a 45 minute commute, living in high-crime areas, or, basically, a box.

I don't mean to lessen the plight of the homeless, but when working class people - you know, us folks who pay income taxes and neither get all the loopholes given to the investor class, nor the breaks given to those at the lowest levels - can't afford to live near our workplaces, it's just a downward spiral.

My dream of home ownership ,is exactly that a dream. I live in the San Francisco Bay area ! In 1972 ,my family moved from Chicago ,to Ca. My parents purchased a 5 bedroom home for 48,000 ! That same house is now priced in the 700,000 range ! They only way I will ever be able to own,would be to move at least an hour father out from where I work , and the traffic situation is so bad that what should be a hour drive is a 2 hour+ drive each way. I want to see my 9 & 7 year old kids grow up ,not looking instead at the ass end of the car in front of me,4 hours per day ! Even with the move ,I would still have to pay 300,000 + for a decent house ! Dreaming of winning the state lotto ,is the only releif I get from the reality of my situation ! Paying 1,500 rent for a 2 bedroom condo, plus other very high cost of living, makes saving for a down payment impossible!
Take Care Nick

Either way the cartoon loses--if it's a serious statement it's truly naive. If tongue-in-cheek, it's in very poor taste.

I was poking around last night - actually, I was looking for information on Michael York and Michael Biehn, after watching this incredibly lame TBN Armageddon movie they were in, called Megiddo. I wound up at a very funny online magazine called The Door, which satirizes Christian churches and is amazingly run by Christians. This led me to The Trinity Foundation - which, among other things, owns the magazine, hires private investigators and investigative journalists to expose corrupt TV preachers, and runs humanitarian projects in Dallas. The head of this foundation, Ole Anthony, says he found that a lot of the homeless in Dallas had given their last dollars to televangelists on faith pledges.

and when you get right down to it, mental illness.

(even if just figuratively) and eats up so much of your income, it definitely gets you closer to finacial disaster.

Check out what's in the guy's cart and what he's wearing. The cartoon isn't about homelessness as much as it's a comment on what's happen to the middle class.

His belt isn't a rope. It's a tie. He has a tennis racket in his cart.

Very cute. He just might have to sell that racket for something to eat. :eyes:

It looks like the point of the cartoon is: "<sarcasm>Look how much space your middle-class income can buy you these days! Isn't the economy great under Bush-Cheney?</sarcasm>"

cartoon because they are NOT ending up on the street...yet.

The middle class has options that the lower classes (ie: the people who end up on skid row the fastest and the most frequently) don't. In my case, I was out of work for two years and had a home to sell. That gave me a pocketful of cash to live on, but I lost my home. A year later, the real job still hasn't materialized and the bank account is shrinking. Is the next stop the streets? Hardly. I have friends I could borrow from and relatives I could move in with to stave off destitution, at least for a while.

The lower classes don't have such options. No savings, living week-to-week, paycheck-to-paycheck, no insurance...and most friends and relatives in much the same boat as they. The streets are a very close and often tragic reality for them.

So, the upper and middle classes can laugh along with The New Yorker because while they may be less well off than they were a few years ago, their options haven't been exhausted, hope springs eternal, and they haven't *yet* imagined - much less been in - the situation of our homeless middle-class white dude in the cartoon.

Especially to those of us who don't have to pay thousands of dollars a month to live in some ratty apartment. I guess a lot of people who do and are compensated accordingly would have no concept of how unfunny that is.

some people have it. Some people don't.

fill in the rest yourself.

I may not have good taste, but the "race to the bottom" is definitely on.

To the Editor -

As a former denizen of The Big Apple now transplanted to Sin City, I look forward
to each issue of The New Yorker as a lifeline to the city I have loved for over
25 years. The city I remember - while always a dichotomy of social class and empowerment
- was always a place where basic respect for each others humanity was an unwritten
but always-observed law.

Imagine my shock when your May 31 issue arrive in my mailbox, "graced"
by Bruce McCall's cover. When did the worm turn in NYC? When did it become acceptable
for the well-off to have their sport at the expense of the unfortunate? Have we
really abandoned our social contract to the point that homelessness is now fair
game for cheap laughs? What's next, AIDS? How about infant mortality?

I notice that the homeless man pondering his new box is a very-well-fed white man,
ie: the 21st Century's brunt of all humor. Perhaps Mr McCall felt that was a "safe"
way to make his point, but the guy certainly doesn't look to me like your typical
homeless New Yorker.

Still, I wonder what McCall's homeless man *is* contemplating, chin in hand. Perhaps
he's wondering if the neighborhood is OK. How about the schools? Will his wife and
kids fit into the box with him? Will he need to pay $500 a month to park his shopping
cart in the garage up the street? Who knows?

And who cares, because we're laughing at him, not with him.

To the contrary, it's easier to imagine what he "isn't" thinking about,
and that would include whether the box includes a mailing address to receive his
subscription to The New Yorker...or if he could afford even a single issue at the
$3.95 cover price. Hmmm? Buy The New Yorker, or feed the kids tonight? Quite a Hobson's
choice, wouldn't you say? Hey, homlessness IS funny after all!

The New Yorker can do better than this.

stopbush
Las Vegas, NV

Well done.

:thumbsup:

Thought provoking and empathic.

Great way to illustrate your point.

Thanks for posting.

I see your point, but there are even people ending up homeless in Europe. In theory the state should provide them with an apartment, but reality is quite different. For various reasons: a few just don't want to settle down, but most have real problems (illegal immigration, addictions, other social problems, pride ...) - and some really manage to slip past the social net.

Not so much that even the homeless have agents, but that even cardboard boxes have become agent-worthy. That's more reflective of the trends in the metro area. I don't think it was intended to be fun at the expense of the homeless. The truth is that properties that not so long ago were places no middle class person would consider living are affordable only for the affluent and there's nothing left at all for the poor. There's nothing tasteless about commenting on a situation with humor. That's satire. It gets the point across.

next, rather than, let's laugh at the homeless.

..we've taken a basic human need, SHELTER, and made it a commodity. People should have a right to basic shelter. This cover just points out the ridiculousness of rising housing costs.