Homeless Wisdom

There are a couple of journalistic techniques that I really don't like, mainly because they are so lazy. The first is going to the local diner, finding a trucker, and asking his opinion of some major event because such people are supposed to represent the pulse of the nation.

The other is asking for the received wisdom of the homeless. These are people who are frequently addicts or insane. Indeed, according to this homeless advocacy group approximately 38 percent suffer from a substance abuse problem while another 20-25 percent have a serious mental illness. So we're talking around 60 percent fall in one of the two categories.

These aren't really the people I would go to for advice on life or the state of the world -- usually for that I try to find people more successful than myself. But that didn't stop Courtland Milloy of the Washington Post from finding a bum to interview:

If you want to see how America looks from the bottom rung of society, visit Terry C. Beckwith at his homestead beneath the 11th Street Bridge in Southeast Washington. He's not your stereotypical homeless person, neither schizophrenic nor drunk nor traumatized by war. He calls himself an "oxymoron," not to be confused with just any moron.

"I'm fragile and tough, warm and cold, smart and dumb -- and it's driving me crazy," he said. When I reached out to shake his hand, he bumped knuckles instead: "I'm friendly, but I don't want to be your friend."

After summarizing a silly conversation that runs the gamut from Republican dirty election tricks (which are disgusting if true), Bible quotation and his dislike of his last name, Milloy concludes the column with this kernel of knowledge from his homeless interviewee:

He went on to say: "A guy on my level is not regarded as an American; I'm the liar, the thief, careless and soulless." (He flies an American flag at his homestead so he won't forget who he really is.) "But when I look at the so-called real Americans" -- he continued, making quotation marks with his fingers -- "I wonder what kind of people we would be if we did not have our possessions, our positions and our money to validate us. Would we still believe that we had to win at all cost, even if it meant cheating and conning one another?"

This is disgusting and insulting. Myself, and the vast majority of people I know, did not get to where we are by conning and cheating each other. Frankly it boggles my mind why Milloy would repeat this. Does it mesh with his own observations of society? Are most people he knows liars and cheaters? If so, it doesn't speak well of the Washington Post.