Home Depot employees can’t change national attitudes to healthcare but they can build someone a walker, so they’re bad people?
These feel good stories are entertainment. They leave out those success stories that would make people sick in their stomach.
Like a woman getting cancer and her mother working as a prostitute every day to get money for the treatments. I would like that story told with chirp voices and beautiful guitar tune in the background with the daughter and the mother smiling.
"And we finish with a beautiful inspiring story of love. It's about a churchgoing mother in a small Arkansas town who prostituted herself for three years to save her daughter."
More importantly, though, these stories rarely criticize the systems that cause these horrors — America's broken healthcare system which revisits injuries upon the poor and sick, zoning and development practices that breed homelessness, cruel school lunch programs that punish poor kids for having poor parents.
I think the article means to take it a step further—these are stories by rich people for [mostly] rich people about poor people that build and reinforce a narrative and expectation that the context of the perseverance isn’t the real story. By crafting/telling/writing/broadcasting perseverance porn, media are objectifying and fetishizing perseverance in a manner that enables the audience to ignore the context and enjoy the “good stuff”—all while normalizing the horrific circumstances of each story. Perseverance is not only possible, it’s the goal! Meanwhile, viewers can sit back and blame those who didn’t persevere for their outcomes.
> The problem with perseverance porn is not the brave subjects of the articles, but the lack of any journalistic scrutiny examining the failings of society that placed them in such desperate circumstances to begin with.
> What these articles highlight so clearly is not only the grim, inhuman and unnecessary conditions so many Americans are forced to live under, but the degree to which mainstream corporate journalists have completely internalized them as unremarkable, inevitable facts of life, rather than the consequences of decades of neoliberal policies that have robbed Americans of dignity and basic human rights.
Neoliberal policy may have built a house out of dry wood, but neoconservative policy lit the match.
tl;dr — neoliberal and neoconservative are on totally different planes of existence in the world of political philosophy and policy; neoliberal doesn’t mean “new-style liberal (left-leaning) ideas”; neoconservativism is an American right-wing policy framework, it does not mean “conservative”, and it doesn’t engage the same arena of thought as neoliberalism does.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism#Current_usage
My specific concerns are regarding deregulation & privatization, as well as a lack of attention related to the consequences of the (relative) free flow of trade, people, and capital across national borders - these (potential downsides) are not discussed in the mainstream. Rather, it is typically reported that "free trade" is an undisputed good, and implies that anyone that disagrees must believe that economics is a zero sum game. (See how the MSM initially reported on Trump's complaints about China's trade practices, until something seemed to change behind the scenes and they all simultaneously got on the anti-China bandwagon).
Policy discussion is about bringing cohesive context to information. Reporting is about reporting information.
Facts tell a story. The reporters for these stories are choosing what facts tell the narrative they think people want (triumph over adversity) without mentioning the facts that they think people don't want (acknowledging that the healthcare system in the US is broken for most Americans).
To get a better perspective of this, imagine a reporter that earnestly believed something you disagreed with. You'd probably want them to stick to the facts instead of tying every world event to their favorite policy.
That is not (all) reporters do.
It’s against site guidelines here to accuse people of not reading the article - please don’t do this.
That does happen sometimes and as a result the poor do-gooder that was just minding his own business and trying to help a family member or friend ends up being vilified and receiving threats.
Even just saying hey here's a person that did a nice thing brings out haters. It gets much worse if the action is associated with a political viewpoint that significant numbers of people oppose for any reason.
I would never ever ever want any of my good deeds to be highlighted in some media article. It would be no end of trouble. Don't talk to cops. Don't talk to reporters.
e.g. Those kids who came up with a creative solution for a disabled 2 year old to play and be entertained deserve to be commended.
Yes, it's horrible there's a disabled two year old, but...
My NHS is most certainly not perfect, but provides a decent safety net. They'd have provided a walker, and maybe the local DIY store might build a playground for local kids in the park.
Well yeah it was bizarre enough in the US to be a news story as well.
It's incredibly strange visiting/talking to Americans how many (of all backgrounds) have this aversion to "socialism"
If somebody steals your wallet, you're fine with calling a Police force. If your house is on fire, you'll call the fire brigade. If somebody attacks your country, you'll invoke your military. If your child is sick, you'll dig out some insurance paper-work and see if you're covered for treatment - as god-forbid you could just consider "getting sick" something you might want resolved by your government as an acceptable use of your taxes.
The normal pushback when I raise this is some weird idea that this would in some way force sub-standard treatment on all (tax can't pay for great treatment for everyone). This isn't the case.
I have private healthcare insurance in the UK from my employer (like many of us do) - but it tends to be used for the little things. Sports-injury clinics, elective surgery at the time of our choosing etc.
If anything serious happens to us - then the NHS is the preferred option (private healthcare doesn't even provide A&E, trauma etc). If your need is great, then you'll be triaged to the top of everything and get whatever you need.
But this isn't news, is it?
This is the way US healthcare has always been.
Everyone's asking why a news story doesn't mention something that is not news to anyone.
Maybe equivalent would be a "Heartwarming story of how a 9 year old in Oregon has defended his family home, with his .22 rifle from the Isis caliphate that invaded back in March"
In focusing on the individual perspective, you could argue that articles like this subtly promote a certain set of views/assumptions - "people get what they deserve", "those that work hard get ahead", "individual charity is better than gov programs", "this is just the way things are".
The societal failure perspective is at odds with these and would like to see things approached from a different set of view/assumptions - "unequal opportunity from birth results in people not getting what they deserve", "success in life is mostly luck", "societal problems should be solved for everyone that has them", "we can make things better".
Reddit actually has a perfect reflection of this - stories that appear on r/UpliftingNews will sometimes also appear on r/ABoringDystopia, with the different perspectives becoming apparent in the discussions.
Several paragraphs to say that in first world countries these people wouldn't be needing to do whatever they painstakingly did would shape a public opinion of "hey, government, you're sort of failing us..?".
But maybe that would be propaganda, or activism? I suppose one function of the fourth estate is to challenge the government, and when the sort of mentioned shit is happening in the richest country in the world...
But why is it normal that a 2 year old can't walk and nothing can be done to help him EXCEPT by Home Depot employees?
Why isn't part of the story mentioning how there's no affordable or free program to help 2-year-olds walk?
It's not normal that Home Depot helped. That's why it's a new story.
> Why isn't part of the story mentioning how there's no affordable or free program to help 2-year-olds walk?
Because that's not news - that's how things already are.
News is unusual and interesting things. Reporting that the state of US healthcare is unchanged is not news.
I'd say you're wrong on two counts. The first is that no one is saying it's the Home Depot employees that should be doing it. The article makes it clear that the media should be presenting the story in a way that ties it to the national conversation, instead of ignoring the implications of how these stories keep happening.
The second, is that actually Home Depot employees can change national attitudes. There is this thing called Unionizing that allows workers to call for strikes and bargain for better working conditions. Such a union could help contribute to a difficult conversation about the need of our companies and government entities to protect the health of our most vulnerable, which most likely would include a sizeable number of those same workers.
"Such a terrible {condition/experience/situation} -> But look they {over came/received crowdfunding/received support}. Everything is okay, and aren't you moved by the {courage/support} of this story?"
Instead of saying all of that AND then also noting
"And this child who clearly needs a walker, would not have been able to get one due to an INSANE cost of {price}, yet when a suitable replacement came about from literally a hardware store costing {price}? Why is our healthcare charging 50x more " etc etc
Do you see where thats really fucked up now? All of these stories typically and conveniently skip over the root causes of these issues -> Where did the {tragedy/trial} come from?
I mean, sure, Home Depot employees can't change everyone's attitudes to health care, but the folks talking about it and giving it national attention could frame it differently.
"If we had national health care, our Home Depot employees could spend time helping folks with fun things or growing food instead of building children wheelchairs"
You can still pile on the praise of the individual while denouncing the system that made this situation be necessary.
They can highlight what the employees did, but at how insanely broken the system is, that this needs to be done. Maybe ask their representatives for an opinion, and writing "The area's congressmen and senators did not respond when we contacted them" is enough of a wake up call, to make the public see...
Err that sounds like more spin not less?
I’m aware though that discussing reality is sometimes “too political”...