Posted on July 29, 2011 by Patrick Markee The right-wing Heritage Foundation has long sought to, well, to disprove the existence of poverty, and their latest attempt — a “report” issued last week — is as mendacious as ever. The foundation’s Robert Rector — long an enemy of poor people and government programs that assist them — essentially claims that poor Americans are living in the lap of luxury because…well, because most of them have luxury household items like refrigerators and ceiling fans and answering machines and color TVs. (As others have remarked, I guess the poor don’t like buying all of those black & white TVs currently flooding the market…) We felt a certain weary impulse to respond to this piece of propagandistic “research,” emphasis on the weary. But lucky for us, Stephen Colbert got there first with the right response. And while his entire brief clip is hysterical as usual, we loved these lines: “A refrigerator AND a microwave? Ooo la la! I guess the poor are too good for mold and trichinosis.” …. “The report proves that the poor are just not living down to our expectations. If you still have the strength to brush the flies off your eyeballs, you’re just not really poor.” Enjoy the entire clip here.
