Until the 1970s, the initiative was called The Hundred Neediest Cases, with all the stories of individual heartbreak and hard luck dumped into one special edition of the newspaper in a feast of what can only be called poverty porn. In subsequent years, in an effort to be more respectful to the needy in light of the rising political right wing's demonization of the poor and welfare programs, the charity drive began spreading out its articles from November through January every year. And rather than administering the fund itself, the Times began farming out the selection process to various religious and secular social service agencies in the city.
Despite a surface attempt at enlightened sensitivity, the paper still refers to recipients as "cases" rather than as human beings. This term connotes both pathology and criminality, as in a case of tuberculosis or a court case - or at best, equates a human being with an academic exercise.
Attitudes toward the poor have not, in fact, changed, Here's what the great muckraker Upton Sinclair had to say about the Times's Neediest Cases a hundred years ago, during our previous Gilded Age of obscene wealth inequality:
The Times never goes into the question about the social system which produces these harrowing cases, nor does it allow anyone else to go into this question: what it does is to present a hundred victims of the system with enough money to preserve them until the following December, so that they may again enter into competition for mention in the list, and have their miseries exploited by the Times.Of course, recipients of the fund did not and still do not receive anywhere near what they need to sustain themselves for another year. They don't receive any direct cash aid at all, in fact. Upton Sinclair certainly didn't foresee the Neoliberal Project and philanthrocapitalism and tax dodges and corporate branding factoring in to the Neediest Cases fund the way they insidiously factor in to the newspaper's initiative today. Although individual and corporate donors are no longer listed by name, they very much remain integral characters in the newspaper's flashy profiles of its "needy cases."
For example, a piece ostensibly about a struggling single mother with three teenage daughters morphs into a plug for corporate giant Procter and Gamble's "End Period Poverty" program of donating pads and tampons to a measly 20 food banks in the United States. Another story , about the Jazzy Jumpers, a double dutch jump-roping team based in a Brooklyn housing project, points out that these deserving youths have appeared in TV commercials for Google and Madewell. The team was awarded $32,000 to pay for uniforms, coaching and tour expenses.
One common theme in the neoliberally-defined poverty industry is getting people off minimum wage jobs and food stamps - if not out of unhealthy overcrowded extended family living situations - into subsidized internships and STEM programs of study. One young woman received a $300 grant from the Neediest fund to "dress for success" while she networks. in hopes of one day landing a job in cybersecurity at the NSA. Her onerous $3,000 student debt from a year of community college, however, is still on her.
Other stories chronicle the Neediest Cases who have made it their life's work to "give back" to the same programs that once helped them. A mother of a child with autism was given a low-wage teaching assistant job at the preschool while she still shares a two-bedroom apartment with her daughter, her sister, her parents and two nephews. The Neediest Cases fund thus gave her a $200 Visa (plug!) gift card with which to buy her child sneakers and boots. Priceless! In exchange for this reward, the mom and child posed rather awkwardly for several stylized color New York Times photos.
In another heart-rending "case" described by the Times, there's a grandfather with kidney failure and heart trouble, a mom with high blood pressure and Type 2 diabetes, and a bullied learning-disabled daughter all living in a rat-infested apartment with no working bathroom sink. However, since enrolling in a mentoring program and getting a $550 laptop computer from one of the paper's outsourced social service agencies, this lucky winner proclaims herself grateful for the opportunity to browse on the Internet in search of other opportunities.
As the Times's Neediest Cases drive goes into its third month, readers have donated a little over $3 million for struggling people living in the Income Disparity Capital of the country. This isn't very much at all, considering that there are now 112 billionaires living in New York City, up from 109 a year ago. One out of every seven billionaires calls the Big Apple home.
Nothing much has changed in the century since Upton Sinclair wrote his critique of the Neediest Cases initiative. On the same Sunday in 1919 that featured the hundred people in need of help, he noticed another article:
Young Mr. Vincent Astor was erecting his country estate at a cost of one million dollars. This building was for the use of Astor and his friends; it had no place for the public. It was devoted to tennis and swimming and gymnastics; it had no place for literature. music, art, science, or religion - it was a typical product of the private property regime.Astor, of course, would be a multibillionaire today and his estate would have risen in value to the hundreds of millions. The difference is that today's oligarchs have much more of a direct influence on politics than they did in the first age of the Robber Barons.
Juxtaposed with the Times's self-congratulatory, feel-good, lushly illustrated Neediest Cases series in 2019 is the saga of billionaire Democratic donor Craig Hill,trapped in his Swarovski crystal-infested wine cave in Napa Valley, California. He is incensed that he has been singled out by Elizabeth Warren as one of the corrupt political system's Greediest Cases - just because he gave a lavish fundraiser for wealth-serving centrist presidential contender Pete Buttigieg.
This poor mogul must feel every bit as exploited as the Times's "cases."
"I'm just a pawn here," he groused to the Times, which noted that he has given more than $2 million to such needy candidates as Nancy Pelosi and Kamala Harris. That's about two-thirds the amount raised thus far this season by the Times Neediest Cases drive.
Something tells me that our priorities are as seriously screwed up as they ever were in the Land of the Free Market.
