Food Stamps, Christianity, and the Meaning of Irony

By Michael O. Varhola

Recent comments by Newt Gingrich characterizing President Obama as the food stamp king may be at the root of an item currently making its rounds across the Internet and being posted to people's social networking pages as if it was something they came up with on their own. Whoever did actually generate the following quip, however, is not taking credit for it:

"Isn't It Ironic?" this unattributed item asks. "The food stamp program, part of the Department of Agriculture, is pleased to be distributing the greatest amount of food stamps ever. Meanwhile, the Park Service, also part of the Department of Agriculture, asks us to 'please do not feed the animals' because the animals may grow dependent and not learn to take care of themselves."

This self-consciously cute but subtly vicious item -- which is similar to and may have its genesis in comments made by South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer in January 2010, for which he subsequently apologized -- struck me in a number of ways.

First is the way it implicitly equates food stamp recipients with animals. I will not go as far as saying this is racist on the face of it, although I suspect that the image that comes to mind of food stamp recipients for many of the people who re-post this item would, in fact, brand them as racists. Perhaps worse, however, is that it is simply misanthropic and reflects a general despisal of other people.

Second is the suggestion that U.S. Department of Agriculture personnel should actually be ashamed that they are accomplishing the things they have been tasked with. These civil servants are simply carrying out policies they have been assigned with fulfilling and if they successfully do so then there is no reason they should not be pleased with it. Are the people who re-post the item being discussed here ashamed of what they do on a day-to-day basis? (Although if some of them actually took a full minute to think through the implications of the things they repost without consideration then the best of them probably would be a little bit ashamed.)

Finally, it struck me that this item is itself ironic in two key ways.

One is that, in one of the most prosperous nations on earth, people who have enough to eat would object to a program that helps provide food for the impoverished. This really is the epitome of smug cruelty and I would be willing to bet that none of the people who have re-posted this item have actually gone hungry because their taxpayer dollars have helped feed those who are neediest.

What is even more ironic, however, is how many of the people who repost items like this and embrace the ideas behind them characterize themselves as Christians! I absolutely support the right of everyone to believe what they want and to express those beliefs, the ones described here included. But the hard, cruel, nasty sentiments expressed in the item being discussed here are assuredly not Christ-like and is makes my skin crawl to think of Jesus saying something like this. If people with such ideas were simply to admit that they were Satanists, pagans, pragmatic atheists, nihilists, or just about anything but Christians there would be no disconnect between their attitudes and their ostensible ethos. It is perfectly legitimate to believe that other people are animals or that impoverished children in wealthy nations should go hungry — it just isn't compatible with the tenets of Christianity.

What is truly ironic is the idea that these two diametrically opposed sets of ideas are in any way compatible with each other.