Fox News Says We Should Teach Poor Kids a Lesson by Letting Them Starve

By Lindy West | September 6, 2013 | 7:00pm

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Aren’t you just so tired of all those “irresponsible” poors just pooring around and getting their irresponsibility all over our school systems? How irresponsible of them—being so poor! And right in front of the normals! All those poor children irresponsibly demanding food to fuel their poor brains, when their irresponsible parents couldn’t even be bothered to “remember” to pay their reduced-fare lunch bill? Nice try, poors! Luckily, some fuckin’ guy on Fox & Friends has the perfect solution: Just throw those poor kids’ food in the garbage, right in front of all the other kids. That way, everyone knows which kids are poor and which kids are responsible, and everyone will finally realize that they fucked up when they chose to be poor. Poorness is abolished! Next stop: A FOOLPROOF GALT’S-GULCHIAN RESPONSIBILITOPIA.

No, but seriously, this guy really thinks that. Here’s Amanda Marcotte at Slate:

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In response to a New Jersey school district choosing to withhold lunch from kids whose parents forgot to refill their lunch accounts, Thomas Kersting, who is alarmingly a school counselor, said, “You know, if one day a kid doesn’t have lunch, right, maybe that’s a teaching moment when that kid doesn’t have lunch. That may sound harsh saying that, but we’ve got to get people to start being responsible for themselves.”

…To be fair, Kersting’s justification for starving kids is to teach the parents a lesson, but his reasons don’t make a whole lot of sense: “We have more food than any other nation. You know, no kid is going to starve.”

Thanks for really digging into this issue, Fox & Friends. The world owes you one. I still think you should have gone with your original title, though—Preening Simpletons Bleat into the Void.

(Thomas Kersting, oddly enough, is introduced by Fox & Friends as a saintly, humble school counselor who spends all of his paychecks on colored pencils for apple-cheeked orphans. But according to his website—which doesn’t appear to feature the words “school counselor” anywhere at all—he’s a “naturally telegenic” “relationship and wellness expert” with a “PhD in Clinical Hypnotherapy,” who records “self-empowering meditation audio” when he’s not busy talking about wayward teens on Nancy Grace. He also “touches everyone he meets.”)

Yes, Thomas Kersting. We have a lot of food in this country. That’s why it makes sense to GIVE IT TO HUNGRY CHILDREN. Hungry children whose parents, for whatever reason (money, maybe, or even just time to get it done in between multiple jobs), failed to pay the bill for their school lunch. Hungry children who need that school lunch to make their brains function so they can do well in school and possibly, eventually, break out of the cycle of poverty that keeps adults from being able to, oh, say, pay for their kids’ school lunches. Yes. Let’s keep those kids hungry. For their own good. For an air-quotes “teaching moment.”

I understand what Thomas Kersting is thinking here. He’s thinking that these kids—whose “irresponsible” parents simply “forgot” to pay for their school lunches—are going to grow up into the kind of nauseating dickheads who say shit like, “And that day, when the lunch lady dumped out my stroganoff in front of the entire 4th grade, I learned that I never ever ever wanted to be poor. And that’s how I became a bloviating right-wing ‘relationship expert’ with the most telegenic Guy Smiley rectangle-face in all the land!”

If you take the logic behind that statement and spin it out to its absurd bitter end, what he’s really saying is this: “Hey, I know how we can solve poverty! Just let all the poor people die.” Well, sorry, Thomas Kersting & Fox & Friends, but I don’t accept “FUCK ‘EM” as a legitimate economic policy.