Here Is Your Heartwarming Christmas Tale Of Awful People Manipulating Poor Children

if you don't eat your meat, you can't have any pudding

So the Washington Post, which just this weekenddecided it was too hard to keep debunking awful internet hoaxes, apparently decided it is not too hard to maintain some repository of hot garbage called "Inspired Life," which features such hard-hitting features as "Call this number and a live person will sing you any Christmas song, 24/7"and"Scientists have found that part of your brain where Christmas spirit lives." This week, Inspired Lifeuncritically vomited up something it found on another horror show called UP TV, "a television channel dedicated to uplifting programming." Good Christ.

So what was so inspiring, actually? Oh, just some folks displaying the ethical chops of Stanley Milgram in dealing with the low-income children at the Boys and Girls Club of Metro Atlanta.

First, the people at UP TV asked a bunch of poor kids what they wanted for Christmas. The answers were basically the things most kids, poor or rich, probably want: xBox, Barbie Dream House, computer. Then they were asked what they thought their parents wanted for Christmas. Guesses included a ring, a television, a watch. Thus far this is boring and we are even bored writing it. But then the bastards at UPTV trotted out each kid's dream gift. And their dream gift for their parents. You know where this is going, don't you? And then they were told they could only pick one.

Wendy McCoy, UP TV senior vice president of marketing, said the organizers were amazed at the children’s selflessness and “how touched they were to be able to make this choice.”

“I saw pride there for them to be able to make that sacrifice,” she said. “It’s really driving home the true meaning of Christmas that it’s better to give than receive.”

And in that spirit, the network ultimately let the kids keep both gifts.

What in the love of all that is Christmas Spirit Holy is this shit?? Oh, to feel the "pride" of being poor enough that you have to choose between you getting a gift or your parent getting a gift. Oh, to feel the joy of "sacrifice" in a Christmas season where you're from a family poor enough that many of these kids don't actually have Christmas trees to put their nonexistent gifts under. Oh, to get to be a puppet of some marketing shill at a tenth-rate television network that wanted to prove some heartwarming point about the nobility of the poor. It's a Christmas miracle!

The kids likely did learn one valuable Christmas lesson from all this, which is that if you are poor in America you are beholden to craven assholes and wannabe do-gooders like these people and we wouldn't blame you one bit if you want to just burn it all down.

[ WaPo ]