Fox's John Stossel: Jesus Wants You To Stop Giving Money To All These Fake Homeless People, Like John Stossel. Again.

It is almost practically the holiday season, a time of year when some of us are grateful for all the bounty we have been given, like living in the US instead of a Rio favela, and living in a home instead of squatting in a box, and also eating food and drinking liquor without anybody telling us we should not eat food or drink liquor, except for Betsy Rothstein, but she's no fun. For many of us, the coming season, and the cold weather, remind us to be a little more giving, a little more bountiful our own selves, a little more, what's the word, Jesusy.

But since it is almost the holiday season, that also means it is time for Fox's John Stossel to perform his annual holiday pageant, "I Was A Fake Homeless Person Begging For An Hour So All Homeless People Are Fake Like Me Except For The Ones Who Are Not Those Are Drug Addicts They Should Die." It is the feel-good hit of the fall!

Encapsulate it for us, Think Progress, so we do not have to have an aneurysm watching John Stossel tell people not to give hungry people money:

Donning a fake beard, Stossel sat on a New York City sidewalk with a cardboard sign asking people for help. “I just begged for an hour but I did well,” he said. “If I did this for an eight-hour day I would’ve made 90 bucks. Twenty-three thou for a year. Tax-free.”

Elizabeth Hasselbeck, who recently purchased a $4 million home in Greenwich, gasped in horror at the prospect of poor people earning $23,000 a year. Some people asking for money “are actually scammers,” Hasselbeck warned, seemingly unaware of the irony that the only panhandling “scammer” Fox News identified was Stossel.

Well, they seem nice.

Not to get all "BETTER CHRISTIAN THAN YOU, ELISABETH HASSELBECK" (we're unsure whether glibertarian Stossel identifies as a Christian or not, and don't care), but WE ARE A BETTER CHRISTIAN THAN YOU, ELISABETH HASSELBECK. Do you know how we know this? Because it says in the Bibble "whatsoever you did for the least of my brothers, you did for me," it is sort of one of the cornerstones of Gospel-type thingies, and we are not so busy saving up our dollars for our $4 million mansions that we are unable to part with a dollar for a fifth of a sandwich or a nice cold beer.

ThinkProgress has the appropriate rebuttals, with numbers and facts if those are your "thing," on what homeless people spend their zillions of ill-gotten muneez on. (Hint: it is food!)

We, though, were most struck by Hasselbeck's gleeful mien when introducing Stossel's package, and also their insistence that you probably shouldn't give to charity either, because fuck charity, that is the Jesus-American way!

We might even type up a nice Charles Dickens fantasy in which Stossel & Hasselbeck are visited by three ghostly spirits who would show them the error of their ways, but the most likely outcome of that scenario would be a special report on how they blew away some home invaders with their AR-15's.

[ ThinkProgress ]