Rose isn’t a Rose isn’t a Rose...

Either William Shakespeare or someone calling himself that put the following words into the mouth of what had probably been a real teenage girl of Verona, Italy, who had died in a dual suicide with her lover in 1303: "What's in a name? That which we call a rose / By any other word would smell as sweet.”

What a crock!

First, as someone would have said if anyone had heard it, “If a rose grows in the forest and there’s no one there to smell it, does it smell?” More to the point, if we all were to start referring to roses as “fertilizer,” people might stop smelling them altogether, so roses wouldn’t smell. Ergo, roses wouldn’t smell sweet. Therefore the statement was a crock.

Second, Juliet is talking to Romeo Montague and her whole point is that the name “Montague” means nothing, so far as she’s concerned. Well, so far as the rest of us are concerned, “Montague,” in the play, means unusually wealthy Jerry Springer-fodder. All money, no class. And, what do you know, but Romeo goes and proves he’s a genuine Montague, deserving of a Darwin Award by killing himself because he supposes his 14 year old wife did, after not bothering to get a medical opinion.

Recently a Real Change Board Member said she didn’t like to use the word “activist.” Instead, she preferred “advocate.” Would an activist by any other name be as activating? No! But if you call them “advocates,” from the Latin for “speaker-outers,” then, before you know it, they stop activating, they even stop being active. They become couch potatoes who now and then speak out. Don’t ask me how I know that. Note that I’m not saying that being a couch potato is a bad thing.

Words and names do matter. Otherwise we wouldn’t have these squabbles over the choice between “liberal” and “progressive.” If you’re progressive you’re going somewhere. But if you’re liberal you’re headed along a particular path that people set forth upon long ago, to let knowledge liberate. So the word “liberal” provides a compass heading for your progression. Like the man said, you don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. You need a wet finger and a compass.

Here’s another example. Rev. Jerry Falwell has started a campaign to use a range of tactics, including boycotts and legal action, to force governments and major retail chains to use the word “Christmas,” rather than losing the Christ connection by talking about the Holidays, or the Holiday Season. For example, Falwell would have folks boycott Wal-Mart unless Wal-Mart forces its Jewish employees to greet you with “Merry Christmas.”

From what I have said here and elsewhere you will know that I heartily sympathize with Rev. Falwell and his fellow practitioners of the heavily oppressed religion of 95% of Americans, because whether the name “Christmas” is used really does matter.

It’s mattered ever since the beginning, back to the 4th century After Christ, when Pope Julius called December 25 Jesus’ Birthday even though everyone knew Jesus wasn’t born in December, just so it would no longer be called “Hooray the Sun is Returning to Us Day,” as it had been.

But in the late 1800s Christmas was forced to change away from simply being Christ’s Pretend Birthday. This began precisely when Congress said Christmas would be a federal holiday, granting most federal employees the day off.

Naming a holiday a “federal holiday” changes it. Congress can’t establish any religion, not even the oppressed religion Christianity to which almost all congressmen, who write all our laws, profess to belong and practice devotedly. Therefore when Congress names Christmas a “federal holiday,” it also begins to take the Christ and the Mass out of the meaning of it.

So until Congress reverses itself, Season’s Greetings to all and remember there’s less than 18 shopping days to Last Federal Day Off of the Year Day.

Pimp and Circumstance

My goal this week is to wade into a pool of homeless activists and see what bites me. I want to discuss certain deep questions, such as “What is a poverty pimp?” “Who’s calling whom a poverty pimp?” “I’m not a poverty pimp, you are,” and “Whatever I am, you’re double that,” inspired by a couple of minor controversies which have swirled recently.

One has to do with charges out there that Real Change exploits the poor and homeless to keep our director and a few privileged others in the lower middle-class lifestyle that they were born into. I don’t have the space here to get into the details, but I’d like to offer some thoughts of mine regarding those charges.

Our director Tim “Perfess’r” Harris, stands accused of being a greedy, privileged, white, middle-aged, middle-class, Classics-loving, kitsch-collecting, testosterone-driven, quiche-eating, carbs-forsaking, couscous-hating, male. OK, I can live with that. He even has a car, and kids. How dare he afford kids! But when someone says the remaining ten or eleven of us are greedy, privileged, white, middle-aged, middle-class, males, they are wrong in every single case. That’s not the kind of sweatshop we operate around here.

I for one have been homeless four times, and am dirt poor now. Yet even though I am on the board and a white male I’ve never been paid one single potato for the writing I do here. Some greed.

There’s also been a charge that we DO pay some of our writers. These people can’t make up their minds: so is paying good or bad? In the case of our two staff writers, paying is supposedly bad because they are *privileged*, more than, say, the whiner who came up with these charges. I guess so; they can write, if that’s a privilege. I thought it was a talent. But other than that, the charge is a crock.

Truth is, we pay staff when they have to do more than what a volunteer can bear. For the long workweeks we get out of our director we should pay him $52,000 per year. We don’t actually pay him quite that much. Please don’t anyone tell him.

The other controversy concerns “bumvertising” and one of my favorite activists, Michael Stoops of the National Coalition of the Homeless.

Mr. Stoops, like Tim Harris, has his share of detractors. It doesn’t help that at street paper conferences the two of them invariably leave us peons to go party all night at some catered penthouse somewhere, or whatever they do. They could be playing mumbly-peg for all the rest of us know. But I’m kidding; Michael isn’t a poverty pimp.

On the other hand, Ben Rogovy is proof that poverty pimping is alive and well. Mr. Rogovy has recently started an on-line poker service and begun using what he calls “bumvertising” to call attention to it. He pays panhandlers cash, food, and other goods, to advertise Rogovy’s business while they panhandle.

So homeless activists everywhere are outraged, charging Mr. Rogovy with exploiting the homeless. Michael Stoops mainly objects to the term “bumvertising” which perpetuates stereotypes, and I can agree with that, but he goes too far when he also says, "Homeless people are desperate, but they're not so desperate that they are going to be exploited by some avant-garde company that wants to sell their product."

If that were true that would mean homeless people were less desperate than all the other people who work for avant-garde companies that want to sell their products.

No, I would rather Rogovy stopped calling people bums and derelicts, especially now that he has them working, and I’d like to see him stick to paying cash, in order to empower his contractors to choose the goods they want, rather than have their goods chosen for them by the Man. But he’s not exploiting panhandlers any more than Starbucks exploits baristas.

Capitalism exploits, period. Don’t select homeless people out for this special stigma of victimhood.