Looks like New York Times columnist and globe-trotter Nicholas Kristof is feeling kind of shitty about being so rich and the Africans being so poor. It is a noble (banal) sentiment, but in our limited experience, the spiritual poverty of the wealthy may suck but at least you aren’t fucking hungry all the time, and you can go to the doctor and get some mood pills, and you’re probably not going to die before your twentieth birthday, of AIDS. [Twitter]
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{ 46 comments }
Kiss my ass Nick. How’s that for spirit?
Tweetard.
It takes a village to raise such an insightful, self-reflective douche bag.
We can have the best of both worlds in the future. Obama will give us health care and corporate America will continue to take our wages. And people in Africa will be getting our jobs once the Cambodians demand higher wages!
Can I get my spirit poverty subsidized?
Yeah, I live in a chic neighborhood (on someone else’s dime) in Latin America and work in very poor neighborhoods. And whenever I tell the people where I work that they’re warmer, funnier, and party more than my neighbors, they just kind of look at me like I have a third head and ask if one of my neighbors, who doesn’t have to dodge gunfire on the way to work, maybe doesn’t need a live-in maid.
Kristoff just needs a few hookers. He’ll forget all about it. And if I hear someone mention “poverty of the spirit” on the street, I will kick them.
What’s he talking about? I’m poor AND I just bought a metric fuckton of spirits at Binny’s beverage depot.
If by “poverty of spirit,” he means having a hypocritical douchbag be a staff columnist for our largest paper, then yes, there is a poverty of spirit in the US.
A stunning insight from Kristof. One that has only occurred to everyone who has ever traveled to a poor country. Tomorrow he tweets, ‘Have you ever looked at your palm? Dude, I mean REALLY looked at your palm?”
As a grad student in a program where it’s not uncommon for folks to do “international field study” I run into this special brand of bullshit on occasion. Also, for some reason, these same people get very angry when you call them “intellectual imperialists” or accuse them of “interview rape and plunder.”
[re=320582]Scarab[/re]: Also, from the airplane the cars, trucks and houses look like toys. What an even worse poverty of the spirit we would have were not Twitter around letting us communicate such profundities.
I found that the transformative power of a visit like this can literally so deeply effect a person that were they seventeen, they might even write an essay about it in freshman composition, a year later.
If only we could all gain the glorifying self righteousness such a visit provides, while at the same time excusing ourselves from future action, because, hey, we noticed.
Kristof, what’s next? What happens now?
Hate to break it to you Nick, but US America’s also economically bust as well as spiritually bust.
Just lay off, you big meanies! Our own wise editor said, and I quote, “It is a noble (banal) sentiment.” So that means Nick is a for-reals good guy.
(What does ‘banal’ mean, again? Means it was on Twitter, right?)
Like my music teacher used to tell me, “money don’t buy ya happiness, but it sure makes misery a helluva lot easier.” Then he would yell at me to practice some scales once inna goddam while.
I wouldn’t call him banal… but it’s really close to my word.
Wash-board Ab Jeebus? Please give displaced New Orleanians, and the impoverished people in the Mississippi Delta, inner-city ghettos, and rural Appalachia the bootstraps they need to pull up their spirits. Amen.
For my money, if you want banal, semi-retarded generalizations and insightful comments based on looking out the window of the limo, you still can’t beat Tom Friedman.
Looks like Wonkette editor and beer-guzzler Ken Layne is feeling kind of defensive about being so rich and the Africans being so poor. It is a ignoble (banal) sentiment, but in our limited experience, the spiritual poverty of the defensive may suck but at least you aren’t fucking hungry all the time, and you can go to the doctor and get some mood pills, and you’re probably not going to die before your twentieth birthday, of AIDS.
[re=320603]Andropov[/re]: Yeah, what Maureen said.
Little Nicky apparently has plenty of whine AND spirits.
[re=320605]Custerwolf[/re]: I have no idea what you’re talking about. That post was completely and utterly one hundred and thirty two percent original.
A gramme in time saves nine, besides cleanliness is next to Fordliness.
M.C. Steele in the house!
http://blingee.com/blingee/view/91106177-ALIENS-2012-
[re=320603]Andropov[/re]:
[re=]Ken Layne[/re]
Ken, I didn’t know you were rich. WTF, dude?
I’m going to turn on Ad Blocker to keep you poor, bitch.
[re=320609]Andropov[/re]: That’s what I thought the first time I read it.
Actually, what I really enjoy is material poverty AND poverty of the spirit. That’s kick-ass.
I wonder how much of that Christian Children’s Fund is put into a tax-free account in Luxembourg because the destitute refused to abandon their heathen ways.
LEAVE KRISTOF ALOOOOOOOOOONE!
I mean, hell, at least he’s not Anderson Cooper.
[re=320641]tiny mexican[/re]: He’s a mini-Cooper.
Look the advantages of grinding poverty in remote locations on the globe are obvious. Without extremely poor people it would be nearly impossible to find children you can fuck for money.
Sometimes when I see a homeless person begging for change at an intersection, I like to just roll down the window and wave a twenty. When they get close I yell “psych!” and roll’er back up. Then I look at the car next to me and laugh when the driver gives me that look.
[re=320646]Custerwolf[/re]: Ouch.
The exit is on your left, Mr. Cooper…
When I feel the POS (poverty of spirit) coming on, log on to HSN and it subsides. If that doesn’t work, I look for nazi paraphernalia and Star Trek collectibles on ebay. Or buy crank down in the hood, and resell it for a profit in the suburbs.
[re=320668]RoscoePColtraine[/re]: I do almost the same thing except I flash a twenty and tell them they can have it for a five-spot, I just need cigarrette money. So they hand me a five and I drive off with twenty-five scoots.
Do they give Pulitzers for Twitter tweets? I has a sad for rich americans, and I mean that in the most unsmug way possible.
[re=320683]Custerwolf[/re]: Wolfie, if you’re still around, I give you a big sloppy WIN!
It’s odd to return to the US from African villages. So much wealth here, yet people are still such complete assholes.
He should sell me all his worldly possession for pennies on the dollar, then retire to a ditch with only a boombox and a Ladysmith Black Mambazo tape.
Obviously Kristof stays well away from parts of America that are turning into an English-speaking version of Albania – places where his self-serving butthurt about “spiritual poverty” would get him a well-deserved nut-punt.
Spiritual poverty? Suck it up. Giving your fucking head a shake is still free. But clawing your way out of real poverty? Now THAT’s expensive.
[re=320662]Mr Blifil[/re]:
Absolutely! I certainly wouldn’t want to be the one to take Rush’s bronzed Dominican cabana boys away from him. I immagine it would be like trying to take a piece of meat away from a lion.
Poverty of spirit is a murrican right! Fight for your god-given right to be ignorant, selfish and emotionally immature. And, having sex with fat white men waving dollar bills is those impoverished children’s choice. Also.
[re=320577]Internally valid[/re]: metric fuckton
Ha ha yes! Most excellent phrase of the day.
I’m starting to feel like Brad Pitt in Se7en here.
“You know what I’ve always wondered about guys like you? When you’re sitting at your desk, beating off and staring at the word count in your article and willing it to go up through sheer willpower, trying to do your bit for a totally discredited sheaf of shit on newsprint, do you ever go, ‘Jesus Christ, it’s totally amazing what a sad insightless half-informed wank I am?’ When someone says ‘Judith Miller’ or ‘Six-Month Friedman’ do your goddamned BRAIN WAVES even flicker? Cause I’m curious.”
Cool. I guess we no longer have to send aid to Africa, then, what with our Spiritual Poverty and so forth.
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