Also, the worst case of getting old ever. Dorothy Fuldheim was a well-respected and cutting edge newscaster from Cleveland from the 1930s until her death in 1984. She made the mistake of going on the Johnny Carson show in 1979, with Richard Pryor…and you can guess how that went. It was a classic example of clueless white person who doesn’t believe poverty is real meeting a black person who actually knows what the real world is like.
Suddenly, it’s clear how Ronald Reagan got elected.
BwahHaHa…
That is why Richard Pryor is the best ever (no offense, George).
Flat out speaking the truth, and getting laughs (admittedly at the expense of that ‘lady’).
Willful ignorance is amazing and terrifying.
That final “No mam” is priceless.
Didn’t cut deep enough, hence Reagan.
I saw this when it first aired. I was in high school. My ultraconservative father was there and, surprisingly, cheered for Pryor. My dad had grown up in rather extreme poverty. Alas, he still ended up supporting RR, but at least he realized there were lots of people going without basic needs.
I love that soon as she turns to Richard, Johnny knows “oh this is gonna get real” and takes a deep drag on the cigarette like how today we’d go “bring on the popcorn”.
That’s a good audience.
I doubt Dorothy Fuldheim knew this but even if resources are available some people won’t use them. There’s a woman who lives on the sidewalks and in the bus shelters near me. She’s been around for 3 or 4 years now. I’ve seen some folks talk to her, even the cops, but she’s still here. A couple of neighborhood women got her to move from one shelter at a fairly busy intersection to another more park-like place, but she’s back sleeping on the sidewalk bundled up with an tattered umbrella sheltering her from the rain some. There are homeless encampments in the town with shelters, and there’s a new one about to open near us but I would be surprised if she used it. She’s probably afraid to, or too troubled to do it. Shelters are notoriously dangerous places for women, of course, but she’s got the added problem that she talks to her invisible companions constantly and loudly. She’s probably been run out of homeless shelters by other people in the shelter because of that.
Disappointing. I am 53, and grew up in Akron, Ohio, and caught Fuldheim on Cleveland Channel 5. I didn’t realize she had such a blindspot, and was surprised, as she was overall, viewed as perceptive and progressive.
P.Z.-not to nit-pick, but she worked until age 91 in 1984, retiring suddenly after suffering a stroke. She had just interviewed Reagan.
I renemember the day she died in 1989. This month marked the 35th anniversary of her passing.
….https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Fuldheim
As mentioned in her wikiedia page, she spoke up against the actions of Governor Rhodes and The National Guard at Kent State, May 1970. She always seemed fairminded. As I said, this was disappointing.
Randall, best as I can tell from that clip, she genuinely was fair-minded as far as she could tell, but clueless to the reality. And in that clip she was clearly in her dotage and he in his pomp.
(Not like Pryor was perfect, but at least he was kinda genuine)
@ Morales #11
I think that is a fair verdict. She seems completely unaware that she’s the joke. That’s why the final “No mam” is so good.
@robro
You’ve touched on why some conversations about homelessness are genuinely frustrating. Because even if there were enough shelter beds (there aren’t), there are a variety of reasons that is not a solution for a lot of people. Some people can’t use them because they are too far from their jobs (40-60% are employed but still unhoused). Some people can’t use them because they have pets, or families, and there aren’t any that can take them in. Some do have mental health problems and addiction issues that make them unfit to be around people.
And then there are assholes. Some homeless people are just straight up assholes; they’re on the street because they’ve burned ever last bridge with every family member, friend, and romantic partner. They’ve been kicked out of every local shelter for asshole behavior- racist slurs, vulgar gestures, and just being the most unpleasant person you can think of. But even these people need somewhere to live- somewhere where they can’t be assholes to other unhoused people. Because it’s not illegal to be an asshole; but we do like to criminalize poverty. There are plenty of rich assholes, but because they have money, they get to keep being assholes.
Pryor was great in that and low key (not in the sense of the kids these days). He tried to make it connect to white people problems talking about poverty and poor nutrition in Appalachia but she took it in a negative direction, I think misconstruing Pryor’s point. Not entirely sure why Pryor all of a sudden smacked himself across the face. That was really weird.
There are tiers of homelessness. The chronic cases may involve mental illness and/or addiction. But there are acute or transitory cases where people are in bad financial phases. The subprime meltdown was an example. Also health crises can bankrupt someone who was previously making ends meet. The approaches may differ in getting people mental health resources, addiction counseling, or means of helping people out of financial chaos, often not in their own control. The ACA was a bandaid for health care.
There may be cases however rare where people prefer to live on the street or have fatalistically given up. Some take to living off the grid in RVs or converted vans for whatever reason and to an extent they too are unhoused in the traditional idea of housing.
I think people who want the negate the problems of homelessness focus exclusively on those who are refusing help or are perceived to be somehow cheating the system. There’s a strong recent trend toward criminalizing homelessness and maybe exploiting people in work camps as a concept of an idea.
It’s a great example of whitewashing. How thoughtless do you have to be to start deflecting from Appalachian children in poverty not getting enough food for brain development, to blathering about trees with fruit and beautiful blooms?
Strange fruit.
How did Ronald Regan get elected? It was all those starving Appalachians whose brains didn’t work when they voted for him.
I watched it all from Oz, garydargan. The ‘Gipper’, the crowds, the rah rah rah.
Trump was a reality TV star, Reagan a movie star.
Not saying it was necessary, but surely you see how it was sufficient so that the vibe and the idiocy carried it.
(That is how)
@13 THIS
That is the crux of the matter. Some of them are assholes, as you pointed out and some of them you literally can’t live with. The problem that the “homes for the homeless” movement always seems to ignore is that someone has to live next to or in proximity with the problem people. It could be something as mildly annoying as the person robro described (yes, that is mild) or as dangerous as someone who can’t or won’t respect other people’s bodily autonomy, like the enrolled college student (enrolled for one day anyway) who, during placement tests, asked his test proctor if he could touch her feet. Unsurprisingly, the answer was no. He did it anyway, in a manner that required campus security intervention. (My friend was the responding security officer, which is how I found out about it.) He was escorted out of the classroom. He returned and had to be forcibly removed and was then banned from campus. At what point is society allowed to basically ban him from most of society? The professor certainly shouldn’t have to put up with this and neither should anyone else. At what point do you institutionalize this guy? He’s not actively homicidal or anything but it’s unreasonable to ask the people who have the misfortune to be around him to put up with his crap. Contrast that with the mentally ill woman living in her car in a campus parking lot because she’s paranoid with delusions–she refuses to live in her (middle class and worried) family because she’s convinced they’re all skinwalkers and are plotting to kill her. Campus security is trying to gradually talk her down into coming inside one of the campus buildings to talk to a mental health professional but it is a monthslong process requiring daily interaction w/campus security building sufficient rapport to get her to trust them enough to come in for evaluation. She isn’t a danger to herself or others (so far anyway) but she clearly can’t be left to live in her car in the parking lot either–she’s certainly not getting better that way. At what point do you forcibly confine or institutionalize these people? Most inpatient mental health facilities have a waiting list a mile long and priority is given to the people who are a danger to themselves or others, or are in acute distress. If not a mental health facility, then what? Jail? On a rotating basis? They haven’t committed crimes that would normally require a prison sentence and they usually aren’t going to get the mental help they need in prison.
Here’s the problem, silvrhalide: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_cases_make_bad_law
Thing is, a couple of notable exceptions – Bill Clinton & Obama – aside POTUSés have only gotten worse since. Great clip.
The current US administration is filled with people just like her, who live in their own bubble and cannot fathom that there is a different world outside it. And capable of such incredible cruelty.
One thing that gets me is when she gets to “you’re trying to say I’m prejudiced!”
Lady, this is not about you or your emotions. This is about real world conditions people live through that you are willfully erasing.
Professor Juan Cole is one of the most highly respected mid-east scholars. He gives us something to about regarding race.
https://www.juancole.com/2025/11/nationalists-europeans-multiracial.html
Sorry, White Nationalists, Europeans were Black until the Rise of Rome, and Rome was Multiracial
As I pointed out in https://proxy.freethought.online/pharyngula/2025/11/27/thankful-for/
@35 our gratitude to ‘those whose work sustains our lives’ refers to EVERY ONE of the hardworking people who help us, black, brown, white, female, male, EVERYONE.
OOPS, meant to write ‘something to THINK about regarding race ‘
Juan Cole
Dark skinned is not black. I haven’t read the linked paper yet, but ‘most’ is quantified as 63%.
It is rather hilarious in a pitiful manner that Hitler considered Italians to be not white enough, but other Europeans considered the Germans to be swarthy. Plenty of my German ancestors indeed have lovely olive complexions and bright blue eyes, though I myself got brown eyes and am so pale I barely tan.
@ shermanj : “Sorry, White Nationalists, Europeans were Black until the Rise of Rome, and Rome was Multiracial.”
Truth – also of course, we were all black skinned if we go back far enough in time. We all first originated and evolved in Africa and left to live in the rest of the world from there to begin with.
Astronomical perspective. A mere 2 million or so years ago.
Oh and “race” ïs a social, cultural, political construct NOT a biological one. There are NO actual sub-species of humans or “sub-humans” or superior humans. Just humans who differ in far less things than we have in common.
As Shylock’s speech brilliantly put it. Settimng aside the problematic aspects of ‘The Merchant of Venice’ but anyhow.
@ 25. Tethys : Pink skinned isn’t “white” either. Very few of us are albinos.
Black and white aren’t literal but socially, culturally, politically determined. See the treatment of Irish, Spanish, Jewish people etc.. over time & history and respectiev racist rankings. . As sure you already know.
No, this is also false. Humans evolving in Africa doesn’t mean that those humans had black skin. The base model of a human has brown skin and black hair.
Both White and Black have evolved in response to humans living in wildly varying environments.
From the article linked in the Juan Cole piece.
@ ^ Tethys :Okay. fair enough. Did not know that. Thought we all started off with much darker skin but stand corrected here, thanks. Haven’t read that piece yet – will have to do so later.
@StevoR
De nada. 😀
@ John Morales #11: “…she genuinely was fair-minded as far as she could tell, but clueless to the reality.”
See also: “… I feel that you are men of genuine good will and your criticisms are sincerely set forth, I would like
to answer your statement in what I hope will be patient and reasonable terms.”
https://www.csuchico.edu/iege/_assets/documents/susi-letter-from-birmingham-jail.pdf
One of the best things my parents ever did for me was hosting a student from Brazil.It was a thing that was floating around at the time and I think my traveled dad had more to do with it than my mother.
Hey Daire! Daire Brito.
He was so cool.He would walk with me to my grade school and then on a few blocks farther to the high school he was attending and for me was years away.
It was my first real exposure to futbol.
He had a nappy head of hair.
@18 silverhalide. I don’t know, couldn’t comment on a case from a mere blog description (not to disparage you here, it is as good as it could be given the limitations, I’m sure), and in terms of relevant expertise, I’m a pretty good wind farm tech.
However, and this is what I think government can and should be, There is in general a public service backed up some of the best minds on the planet. They should deal with it, effectively and humanely. I don;t know what they would say in terms of having a system to deal with such things including the extremely difficult out liers. I think this is what you are describing here, (but see above). But anythings gotta be better than having folks die of exposure on the streets. Even the Romans understood this and they were fans of crucifixion among other many terrible cruelties after all. Bread and Circuses was a way to stop dead people clogging things up, not some humanitarian enterprise, even if the results ended up being somewhat humanitarian after all.
“But anythings gotta be better than having folks die of exposure on the streets.”
Hm.
Even the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Clockwork_Orange_(novel)#Part_2:_The_Ludovico_Technique ?
Hey, can you possibly provide me a transcript of this??? I am hard of hearing, so I rarely EVER watch YouTube videos. (Ever heard of the “NoMoreCraptions” hashtag?)
Samuel, go to the YouTube link for it, click on ‘more’ in the description, then on ‘show transcript’.
It opens on a sidebar, timestamped and all broken up, and of course it’s autogenerated. Still.
When I want it, I copy paste the lot (select the beginning, then shift-pagedown is what I do) then paste it into a bot and ask it to ‘massage’ the transcript and fix the linebreaks and remove the timestamps.
So. I am toeing the line, but…
—
[bot: Here’s the transcript massaged into proper line breaks, punctuation, and paragraphs for readability. I’ve kept the wording intact but cleaned up the formatting:]
People live in the streets
Nobody starves in our country. Nobody has to go out in the corners to beg. You can go and get medical aid there. Nobody lives in the streets.
There are some people that live in the streets here in this country.
“Yes ma’am.”
“Well, they don’t have to.”
“Well, tell them.”
[Applause]
People sleep in the streets
“I’m not being facetious.”
People have to sleep in the streets like they do in India.
“Yes ma’am, but they don’t.”
“Yes ma’am, they sleep in the streets and they die here.”
“Well, they die anyway, even if you sleep in a bed. You just described a number of deaths.”
“No, I mean like in India you die from starvation and stuff.”
“Well, you run down to starvation here.”
“Yes ma’am, you can always get some food.”
“We have it, I know we have it, but we don’t always give it.”
“Wow.”
Nobody has to starve
“I’m sorry to differ with you, but I don’t think statistics would show that you’re right. Nobody has to starve in this country.”
“There are—if you get a gun you don’t have to starve.”
“No, oh no, not with a gun. Come on, you know that.”
“Are you saying that the people who are below the poverty level… and there are a lot of people below the poverty level?”
“Yes, there are.”
Poverty level
“The poverty level now, because of the cost of living, is almost five thousand dollars. And many people who live—this is white people, so I won’t bring it to black people so you won’t not believe me—in Appalachia…”
“There’s no difference in my mind between black and white.”
“Then you’re crazy.”
[Applause]
Prejudice
“Now he’s being frank. Now I’ll tell you something. That’s it—you go hiding behind the fact that I must have a prejudice. Well, damn it, I don’t.”
“No ma’am, I wasn’t hiding behind that. In Appalachia I was trying to make a common denominator for the masses. Like if I use Appalachia rather than Watts, they would understand that better.”
“Yes ma’am, sometimes a baby’s bellies get swollen up. They don’t get enough food and they get—you know, you understand what I’m saying?”
“No ma’am, it’s true. The children get sick because they don’t have enough food to make the enzymes work in their brain.”
“Having listened to you before and some of the things—well, it’s not just me. Walter Cronkite said something…”
Cronkite
“…when the Earth was full of trees that bore fruit, and flowers bloomed, they were sweeter. And there were love affairs to be had. And lynchings.”
Johnny
“I asked you, Johnny. Yes, isn’t he curious? You can talk about beautiful things, nobody applauds. You talk about lynching—I don’t know what the bad applause is. Is it because you approve of lynching, or because you’re happy that he said so?
I can’t figure it out, you know. Can you?”
“No ma’am.”
That’s actually a useful function for AI, though the transcript is a bit confusing if you don’t note who is speaking or randomly put Cronkite in bold so it appears he has a few lines. Question marks and exclamations would be nice too.
It messed up the Cronkite joke, sadly.
Pryor: “No ma’am, it’s true. The children get sick because they don’t have enough food to make the enzymes work in their brain.”
White Lady: “Having listened to you before and some of the things—
Pryor: well, it’s not just me! Walter Cronkite said so!!”
WL: “…when the Earth was full of trees that bore fruit, and flowers bloomed, they were sweeter. And there were love affairs to be had..”
Pryor: (quietly) And lynchings.
(Audience roars with laughter and applause)
roughcanuk@#21:
The current US administration is filled with people just like her, who live in their own bubble and cannot fathom that there is a different world outside it. And capable of such incredible cruelty.
They’re practicing for soon, when the global elite watch heat-waves wipe out Calcutta or what’s left of Bangladesh, and they manage to not see it happening until it’s mostly over. There’s going to be a lot of dying and starving in the next couple decades, and white america’s gonna be good and ready for it – by which I mean we’ll have barbecues while we can afford them.
Tethys @38, I cannot dispute you. I could quibble, but you are quite correct.
Hopefully, now Samuel knows how to see the raw autotranscript within Youtube.
All the timestamps (can click to go there) are with a linebreak, so lines break by time not cadence or syntax or grammar. The transcript itself contains errors, which I did not instruct the bot to fix, but which I could have. You can see its acknowledgement of my prompt.
—
Again, you are 100% correct. The above is quibbling.
[I forgot to say. As the clip plays, the autogenerated transcription scrolls in sync with the audio, so there’s no need to lip‑read from the video. And both adjust: click on the video progress spot and the transcript follows, or click on the transcript and the video follows. Not all videos have it, but most do]
@ 39. Marcus Ranum
Then when people cannot afford BBQs and can’t keep ignoring the overheated catastrophic world they’ve made for us all?
What then?
Do they think they’ll be safe or justdea d and not care? Do they really have no kids or thought for the future at all?
I also wonder if this is why the International order – the idea of being part of the UN and suchlike bodies that work together for good and the pretence of caring about Democracy, Human Rights, international law is being so clearly undermined and ignored by them now.
Noticed how blatant it is and how much it’s just might make sright and we’ll do stuff becausewe can and no oen can stop us in international politics under the Trump regime?
Because iguess a serious international framework or body tyhat could actually enforce international laws could maybe, just maybe do so on them and they will not have that will they? Sigh.
We really are trending in some utterly horrifying and heart-breaking directions these decades..
@43 StevoR
Trump is more obvious about it, but that has been a bipartisan project at least as long as I have been alive.
The rules-based international order is Washington’s rules. We stand for nothing except the raw pursuit of power and accumulation of resources to ourselves — if other nations don’t like that, then our state department will destabilize their society and our military will persuade them otherwise, as many times as it takes for the message to sink in.
BTW Happy Birthday, Richard Pryor. You are sorely missed.
@44. The Trump Enabling Bad faith Troll ‘Beholder” : “Trump is more obvious about it, but that has been a bipartisan project at least as long as I have been alive.”
Bulldust. Note how the Democratic party has worked with the UN and global bodies and institiutuitions and treaties eg WHO, Climate Agreements, UN bodies , WTO , NATO etc.. whilst Trump esp and the Repugs in general have delibaratley withdrawn or weakened them.
Source : https://theprint.in/world/paris-deal-to-who-the-11-organisations-donald-trumps-us-has-pulled-out-of-weakened/432486/
Trump withdrew from many such things, Biden rejoined, Trump withdrew again.
The Democratic party believe in global co-operation and working with other nations for the global bvetterment of all. The Repugs and Trumpists believ the opposite -and yet you voted and argued for and helped the latter.
Well said, Stevor. Of course, there’s much more, such as USAID — which was pure soft power. Was, before being disbanded. Both foreign and domestic damage!
@ ^ John Morales : Truth and so vastly much of it.
@44. The Trump Enabling Bad Faith Troll ‘beholder” (hereafter TEBFTB)
Asserted without evidence.
For starters, Washington is a city and a historical figure. Cities are inanimate objects. George Washington for whoem the city was named died in 1799 long before the modern world as we know it.
“Washington’s rules” as either the rules and regulations of that Federal District now under Trump’s tyranny or the commands of that 1st POTUS clearly do NOT apply here.
Then there’s the reality of what the Rules Based International Order is :
Source : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberal_international_order
Emphasis added for the either wilfully ignorant or maliciously lying TEBFTB.
So yeah, created long after the death of Washington the man, created internationally and co-operatively and NOT dominated by any one group but a co-operative multilateral team effort with significant European and other involvement.
We? Speak for yourself troll. Who is we? Your man Trump stands for that.
Biden, Kamala, Obama, the Democratic party generally and most of us here do not – hence their involvement in working with and being part of the Global Community. Another key difference you have deliberately ignored when it comes to reality.
Fixed it for ya.
Trump was your choice TEBFTB – are you still happy that you voted for him via Stein are you? No regrets yet? No rethinking of your views and past words and actions here and no doubt elsewhere too? Do you now start to understand the depth of what you did and how much worse you’ve helped make our shared planet by failing to support Kamala Harris?
shermanj @23
Perhaps but there seems to be some misinformation on his website.
It was Hitler who sought out Mussolini and modeled his movement after Il Duce’s. Mussolini was initially skeptical of Hitler though.