After two years, (and $250 I might add), I think I may be through with supporting a homeless man in on the internet, financially or by any other means.
He's quite famous, he says. Jane Pauley reads his blog. Sent a television crew to see him. He was quite excited about it initially, and then it appeared that having to follow directions given by the producer during a taped interview was just too stressful. The producer wanted our protagonist to use simple declarative statements using the words "I" and "me." (The gall!)
Our man dropped the whole issue of the television interview, making bitter comments about the shallow American media. Perhaps Jane Pauley and her producer figured this homeless man's story had too many holes in it; that's the thing about journalism (as opposed to blogging), if a question comes up while going through the facts, the question has to be answered. You can't just skip over it if you don't like it.
I'm not surprised the t.v. crew abandoned the story. An outspoken and belligerant advocate for the homeless, this homeless man occasionally wigs out and begins attacking his readers, many of whom have been loyal followers and contributors to his Pay Pal account. He sometimes attacks readers who say they're homeless, questioning their "homeless cred." After all, if you're homeless and don't have a blog, or if you're homeless and drink, well, you're just one of those "bad" homeless people.
He's made many a good point about bashing homeless stereotypes and stubbornly points out that he doesn't drink or do drugs and never did. He's homeless because he's different, you see, unlike those other mean, bad homeless people. He proves that he's different and sensitive by displaying his reading list on one margin of his blog; Thoreau, Kerouak, Bukowski, Steinbeck, etc.
-- Dweeb
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