Every now and again, in my efforts to stay green and minimize my carbon footprint, I venture out into the city by way of public transportation. Aside from the reading material which I keep handy at all times, I also like to really look around and take in my environment. Aside from the fact that I actually enjoy people watching and taking in the scenery around me, it makes sense to stay alert just to make sure some deranged lunatic can’t sneak up behind me and stick me with a hypodermic needle (AIDS infested). After all, this is New York.
All this aside, it was not the deranged lunatics, nor any other people I met that day which really caught my attention. Instead, it was 2 public service advertisements that I happened to come across which really got me thinking. Most people would have probably taken them at face value, or ignored them completely, but I saw a connection with potentially profound implications. After all, there is always truth hiding under our very noses.
The first poster hung in the waiting area of the Staten Island ferry terminal. A place which many of the unfortunate tourists who pass through it daily know, (the ones that don’t look up) is infested with pigeons.
The poster had on it a silhouette of a common city pigeon as its backdrop, and read in bold lettering: IF YOU FEED THEM, YOU BREED THEM. Granted, this is an informative public service message, yet I walked away thinking: what is the corollary here? If we dissect this statement, does it not follow that if you don’t feed them, they will die? Surely it is not the fault of the pigeons that our city streets are diseased and contaminated. I guess this is one case, the city feels, where it’s OK to shoot the messenger.
The implications of that message, being what they were, I still had to move on and get on the boat despite the fact that my last realization left a sour taste in my mouth. And here is where this whole story comes together. While waiting to disembark, i notice another poster, paid for by one of our municipal agencies. This one had as its background, a colorful display of gastronomically inviting food. And it read: GET MORE, GET FOOD STAMPS. Now it did not take long for my relational logic gears to start picking this apart and I am sure you have just realized for yourselves, the conclusion at which I arrived.
Thats right folks, if you feed ‘em you breed ‘em, and I am no longer talking about pigeons. Clearly the city of New York is being very selective in the types of pests that it’s willing to tolerate. Of course since pigeons are to blame for everything, its OK to overburden our already overexploited welfare system by advertising it all over mass transit. Suddenly the old adage comes to mind about teaching a man to fish. How does that one go… give the man a fish, feed him for a day – put the man on welfare and he will find all the loopholes he can to stay on it and abuse the system for as long as humanly possible (indefinitely in some cases). Yeah, I think that was it.
There is no easy answer here. I am not an economist nor do I claim to have the solution for keeping our civil service recipients honest. All I can do is expose irony where I see it. Of course we cannot fix the system overnight, but surely we can stop making certain mistakes that are bound to perpetuate the problems. I’m not suggesting we start taking food away from the unemployed and giving it to our pigeons, but maybe we can begin by tightening our eligibility criteria for who may be entitled to their share of taxpayer money. Surely I am not being too cynical in saying any of this?
