KENDALL CAMPUS

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ENC 1101

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English and Communications Department

MIAMI DADE COLLEGE – KENDALL CAMPUS
 McBudget Advice Is an Insult
By Leonard Pitts, Jr. -- 2013

A few words about the McBudget. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. As fast-food workers
around the country protest for higher wages, we learn that McDonald’s offers advice to help
them live on the wages they make that, while not technically bupkis, do amount to a paycheck
you can pretty much have the driver cash for you on the bus ride home.
In December, for example, Bloomberg profiled a Chicago man who, after 20 years with
the burger giant, earns $8.25 an hour – and doesn’t get 40 hours a week. This, as McDonald’s
CEO Don Thompson pulled down, according to the Wall Street Journal, a compensation package
worth $13.8 million last year. Anyway, Mickey D’s isn’t blind to the difficulties of French fry
makers and drive-through order takers getting by on not quite bupkis. It partnered with Visa on
a website – www.practicalmoneyskills.com/... – which includes a sample budget showing how
you can live reasonably well on next to nothing.
It envisions monthly take home pay of $2,060 from working two (!) jobs. Out of that,
you pay $600 for rent, $150 for a car note, $100 for insurance (home and auto), $100 for cable
and phone, $90 for the electric bill, $20 for health insurance, etc. You save $100.00 a month
and have $750 to play with – if, by “play,” you mean pay for clothing, child care and water.
Also, gasoline, maintenance and repair for the 1997 junk mobile you’re able to buy for $150 a
month. Oh, and food. Can’t forget food.
As you might expect, the McBudget is mildly controversial. Washington Post blogger
Timothy B. Lee called the figures “realistic” and praised McDonald’s for “practical” advice. This
seems to be a minority opinion. Think Progress, the left-leaning website, called the budget
“laughably inaccurate.” Writing for the Wall Street Journal, columnist Al Lewis suggested that
McDonald’s $13.8 million man show us how it’s done by volunteering to live on the McBudget.
The most vexing thing about that budget is its condescension. Take it from this welfare
mother’s son: If there’s one thing poor people do not need, it is lessons in how to be poor. You
will never meet anyone who can wring more value from a dollar. You ever hear of a jam
sandwich? That’s when you “jam” two pieces of bread together and call it lunch. Heck, if you
handed the federal budget over to a couple of welfare mothers, we’d be in surplus by
December. And McDonald’s has lessons for the poor?
However they got into poverty, they all need – and deserve – the same things: a way to
work their way out and to be accorded a little dignity while they do so. The former comes with
paying a living wage, the latter by treating people with respect. McDonald’s fails on both
counts. The McBudget is a McInsult.

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 Excerpt from “Sixteen”
By Charlie Spence

They seemed larger than me that day, the rain drops, as they fell from an endless gray
sky. They illuminated the headlights of oncoming traffic in an iridescent and blurred shine. The
display of colors seemed only to intensify the fear and magnify the pain I felt inside about yet
another tragedy taking place in my life. I sat there dressed in an orange jumpsuit, feet shackled
together and a waist chain tightly secured around my midsection to restrict my arms firmly to
my sides. The sheriff’s van traveled at what felt like the speed of light, never allowing me to
collect my thoughts before arriving at my next destination: life in an adult institution at the age
of sixteen. The words compassionately spoken by the sheriff that day have never left the
confines of my soul, “I didn’t even start to get it together until I was twenty-five,” he said. The
sheriff will never understand the extent to which his words thrashed about my heart. Had I
been tried and convicted as a juvenile, I would have been given a better chance at
rehabilitation and a second chance in society at the age of 25. I feel even more strongly now
than I did back then, that trying juvenile offenders as adults and sentencing them to life in
prison is immoral.
In the year 2000, the people of California voted and passed Proposition 21. This allowed
for juveniles as young as fourteen who are accused of a serious crime to be tried as adults at
the discretion of the District Attorney trying the case. Prior to Proposition 21, juveniles accused
of such crimes were given what is called a “707(b) hearing” in front of a judge, to determine if
they met the criteria to be tried as an adult. Before the 707(b) hearing was introduced, only in
rare and extreme cases of violence were juveniles tried as adults.
It is easy for me to understand the feelings of one who is opposed to my position.
Juveniles do commit crimes that are serious and are considered to be “adult crimes.” The
juveniles that receive life sentences are certainly not receiving them for petty crimes; it is not as
if the fourteen year old shoplifter is locked up and the key is then thrown away. I would agree
too, that most juveniles have a sense of right and wrong from an early age. Surely children
know that they are not supposed to take cookies out of the cookie jar unless given permission
by their parents. On a greater scale most adolescents know it is wrong to smoke, use drugs,
cheat or steal, and, therefore, know it is wrong to commit crime, period. But it seems only fair
that if we are going to take into account the social development of morality within these
children, then by that same token we should also consider their mental development and take
into account the neuroscience and the high likelihood or rehabilitating these same children.

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 A Jerk
By Sydney J. Harris – 1961

I don’t know whether history repeats itself, but biography certainly does. The other
day, Michael came in and asked me what a “jerk” was –the same question Carolyn put to me a
dozen years ago. At that time, I fluffed her off with some inane answer, such as, “A jerk isn’t a
very nice person,” but both of us knew it was an unsatisfactory reply. When she went to bed, I
began trying to work up a suitable definition.
It is a marvelously apt word, of course. Until it was coined, there was really no single
word in English to describe the kind of person who is a jerk—“boob” and “simp” were too old
hat, and besides they really didn’t fit, for they could be lovable, and a jerk never is.
Thinking it over, I decided that a jerk is basically a person without insight. He is not
necessarily a fool or a dope, because some extremely clever persons can be jerks. In fact, it has
little to do with intelligence as we commonly think of it; it is, rather, a kind of subtle but
persuasive aroma emanating from the inner part of the personality.
I know a college president who can be described only as a jerk. He is not an
unintelligent man, nor unlearned, nor even unschooled in the social amenities. Yet he is a jerk
cum laude, because of a fatal flaw in his nature—he is totally incapable of looking into the
mirror of his soul and shuddering at what he sees there.
A jerk, then, is a man (or woman) who is utterly unable to see himself as he appears to
others. He has no grace, he is tactless without meaning to be, he is a bore even to his best
friends, he is an egotist without charm. All of us are egotists to some extent, but most of us—
unlike the jerk—are perfectly and horribly aware of it when we make asses of ourselves. The
jerk never knows.

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 Awful Injustice
By Frank Deford – 2008

Some things in sport, as some things in life, never really get changed, even when they
are indefensible. We say: life is unfair and move on. Sports, though, are supposed to be
altogether fair. Ah, the level playing field! But, alas, that’s only so when referees are around.
Still, every now and then, it’s worth bringing up some glaring inequity, even if it’s
pointless to do so. So now, when college basketball is in full swing and college football is at its
climax, with bowls jammed with high-paying customers, with television revenue pouring in. Not
to mention all the money that hotels and airlines and restaurants and souvenir salesmen and
announcers and sportswriters and coaches and athletic directors are raking in. Yes, now is a
good time to lament anew that, my gracious, isn’t it interesting that the only people not making
money are the people actually playing the games.
It is perfectly unconscionable that big-time college football and basketball players go
unpaid. They are employees, and deserve to be paid based on the National Labor Relations Act.
First, a little history is in order. When college football became a popular sensation more
than a hundred years ago, the concept of amateurism was in full sway. Okay. All Olympic
athletes, for example, had to live by what was always called “the amateur ideal.” But all that
has changed. The most popular Olympic sports have all gone pro. Today, in all the world,
amongst big-ticket spectator sports, virtually the only athletes who are not paid are our college
football and basketball players – whose numbers, ironically, include so many poor African-
Americans.
That this should be so in the United States, bastion of both freedom and capitalism,
makes it even worse. That this should remain the case when college sports charge Broadway
ticket prices and pay their coaches literally millions of dollars, makes it even more shameful.
Moreover, colleges always emphasize that football and basketball make so much money
that they pay for the entire athletic program. To me, this only adds to the cynicism. Not only
do poor black kids get no remuneration for their work, they are expected to carry all these
other coaches and players and teams or their backs with their unpaid labor. Basically, a
scholarship boils down to a device to keep the players on the premises where they can perform
their services for free. Okay, they get a lot of perks. They live well. They’re the equivalent of
what we used to call “kept women.”
Besides, why is it only athletes-who must perform for the so-called love of the game?
Nobody cares if college kids who are actors or musicians or writers or dancers can make a buck
using their talent. Why is an athlete any different?
But, at the end of the day, it isn’t an economic issue so much as a moral one. It’s
absolutely evil that only here in the United States do we allow this unscrupulous nineteenth-
century arrangement to continue to exist – and nobody anymore hardly even bothers to bring
up this awful injustice.

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 “Redskins” Is a Racial Slur No Matter What NFL Says
By Leonard Pitts, Jr. – 2013

See if this makes sense to you: For years, I’ve argued with certain African-American
people about their insistence upon using the so-called N-word which, to my ears, is, inalterably,
a statement of self-loathing.
They say I don’t understand. They say the word no longer means what it has always
meant. They say it’s just a friendly fraternal greeting. I say one cannot arbitrarily decide that a
word – especially an old and bloodstained word—suddenly means something other than what
it always has.
While language does change over time, it doesn’t do so because a few of us want it to or
tell it to. And I say that if I call you an “idiot,” but say that “idiot” now means “genius,” you will
be no less insulted. Does that seem logical? If so, then perhaps you can understand my
impatience with people who insist on defending the Washington football team whose nickname
is a racial slur.
The latest is NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. He recently responded to a letter from
members of the Congressional Native American Caucus, questioning the appropriateness of the
name “Redskins.” That name, wrote Goodell, “is a unifying force that stands for strength,
courage, pride and respect.” The team took the name in 1933, he noted, to honor then-coach
William “Lone Star” Dietz, who was reputedly (it is a matter of historical dispute) an American
Indian. As it happens Goodell’s letter follows a novel – though ultimately failed – effort earlier
this year by the Michigan Department of Civil Rights to ban Indian team names and mascots at
primary and secondary schools.
The complaint MDCR filed with the Education Department argued that such things are
not merely insulting but damaging. It cited the work of Dr. Stephanie Fryberg, an assistant
professor at the University of Arizona who has studied the effects of the team names and
imagery on Native American students. She has found empirical proof that those names and
imagery lead to lowered self-esteem and sense of community worth among American Indian
kids. In other words, seeing their people reduced to mascots is toxic to Indian children. And if
the names and images in general are damaging, how much more harmful is “Redskins”? That
name, after all, was never neutral, but was, rather, a hateful epithet hurled by people who were
stealing from and committing genocide against those they saw as savage and subhuman.
So calling a football team the “Washington Redskins” as a way of honoring an Indian
makes precisely as much sense as calling a soccer team “The Warsaw K—s” as a way of
honoring a Jew. Fans of franchises bearing Indian names often resist changing them out of
sentiment. Owners, meanwhile, are loath to tamper with lucrative trademarks. That’s
understandable. But it is also short-sighted.
This is not about honor and even less about “strength, courage, pride and respect.” It is
rather, about moral integrity, intellectual honesty and the immutable weight of certain words.
Whether we choose to acknowledge it, or never do, doesn’t change the fact: “Redskins” is a
curse word.

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 Prohibition and Drugs
By Milton Friedman – 1972

“The reign of tears is over. The slums will soon be only a memory. We will turn our
prisons into factories and our jails into storehouses and corncribs. Men will walk upright now,
women will smile, and the children will laugh. Hell will be forever for rent.”
That is how Billy Sunday, the noted evangelist and leading crusader against Demon Rum,
greeted the onset of Prohibition in early 1920. We know now how tragically his hopes were
doomed. New prisons and jails had to be built to house the criminals spawned by converting
the drinking of spirits into a crime against the state. Prohibition undermined respect for the
law, corrupted the minions of the law, created a decadent moral climate—but did not stop the
consumption of alcohol.
Despite this tragic object lesson, we seem bent on repeating precisely the same mistake
in the handling of drugs.

ETHICS AND EXPEDIENCY

On ethical grounds, do we have the right to use the machinery of government to
prevent an individual from becoming an alcoholic or a drug addict? For children, almost
everyone would answer at least a qualified yes. But for responsible adults, I, for one, would
answer no. Reason with the potential addict, yes. Tell him the consequences, yes. Pray for and
with him, yes. But I believe that we have no right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a
fellow man from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs.
I readily grant that the ethical issue is difficult and that men of goodwill may well
disagree. Fortunately, we need not resolve the ethical issue to agree on policy. Prohibition is
an attempted cure that makes matters worse—for both the addict and the rest of us. Hence,
even if you regard present policy toward drugs as ethically justified, considerations of
expediency make that policy most unwise.
Consider first the addict. Legalizing drugs might increase the number of addicts, but it is
not clear that it would. Forbidden fruit is attractive, particularly to the young. More important,
many drug addicts are deliberately made by pushers, who give likely prospects their first few
doses free. It pays the pusher to do so because, once hooked, the addict is a captive customer.
If drugs were legally available, any possible profit from such inhumane activity would disappear,
since the addict could buy from the cheapest source.
Whatever happens to the number of addicts, the individual addict would clearly be far
better off if drugs were legal. Today, drugs are both incredibly expensive and highly uncertain
in quality. Addicts are driven to associate with criminals to get the drugs, become criminals
themselves to finance the habit, and risk constant danger of death and disease.
Consider next to the rest of us. Here the situation is crystal clear. The harm to us from
the addiction of others arises almost wholly from the fact that drugs are illegal. A recent
committee of the American Bar Association estimated that addicts commit one-third to one-

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half of all the street crime in the U. S. Legalize drugs, and street crime would drop dramatically.
Moreover, addicts and pushers are not the only ones corrupted. Immense sums are at stake. It
is inevitable that some relatively low-paid police and other government officials—and some
high-paid ones as well—will succumb to the temptation to pick up easy money.

LAW AND ORDER

Legalizing drugs would simultaneously reduce the amount of crime and raise the quality
of law enforcement. Can you conceive of any other measure that would accomplish so much to
promote law and order?
But, you may say, must we accept defeat? Why not simply end the drug traffic? That is
where experience under Prohibition is most relevant. We cannot end the drug traffic. We may
be able to cut off opium from Turkey but there are innumerable other places where the opium
poppy grows. With French cooperation, we may be able to make Marseilles an unhealthy place
to manufacture heroin but there are innumerable other places where the simple manufacturing
operations involved can be carried out. So long as large sums of money are involved-and they
are bound to be if drugs are illegal-it is literally hopeless to expect to end the traffic or even to
reduce seriously its scope. In drugs, as in other areas, persuasion and example are likely to be
far more effective than the use of force to shape others in our image.