It’s an unwritten but profusely underlined rule in Washington that you don’t make fun of the president’s children, but after Donald Trump’s inauguration this weekend, some users on Twitter didn’t seem to get the memo.

In the midst of the inauguration festivities this past weekend, a number of Twitter users made Barron Trump, the president’s youngest son, the butt of a whole host of jokes.

Is it just me or does Barron Trump look like King Joffrey? pic.twitter.com/lJKVyfqgDw

— Game of Thrones Meme (@Thrones_Memes) January 21, 2017

Until @katiemaryrich either profusely apologizes to #BarronTrump or is fired, I will join the many who #BoycottSNL. Loyal viewer since 1975. pic.twitter.com/haQ6PRcHWn

— (((ProperGander))) (@BamaStephen) January 21, 2017

In response to these jokes, a lot of people called foul, reiterating a point that many have preached for decades: the first children are off limits. Former first daughter Chelsea Clinton took to social media on Sunday to express her feelings about the Barron situation:

Barron Trump deserves the chance every child does-to be a kid. Standing up for every kid also means opposing @POTUS policies that hurt kids.

— Chelsea Clinton (@ChelseaClinton) January 22, 2017

Clinton’s support for Barron comes two weeks after former first daughters Jenna Bush-Hager and Barbara Bush penned a letter in TIME in support of Malia and Sasha Obama, praising them for their grace while their parents served as president and first lady and wishing them well on the lives they will embark on after their parents’ time in the White House.

On Monday, NBC suspended “Saturday Night Live” writer Katie Rich for her tweet about Barron Trump, which she has since apologized for. While some have seen NBC’s action as justified, others have come to the defense of Rich, highlighting that crude comments from President Trump and other politicians have not been met with the same kind of swift reprimand.

That Katie Rich joke was just “writers room talk.”

— Moshe Kasher (@moshekasher) January 24, 2017

Katie Rich should have never tweeted that joke. She should have said it on an Access Hollywood bus. Then no one would care.

— Dan Wilbur (@DanWilbur) January 23, 2017

It’s interesting that a writer on SNL is held to a higher standard of language than the man we elected @POTUS @katiemaryrich #stupid

— Chelsea Handler (@chelseahandler) January 24, 2017

Katie Rich suspended from job for joke. Bill Kintner still at work. Once again proving NBC has stricter policies than our Govt. https://t.co/GsUBIB6wfJ

— Paul Scheer (@paulscheer) January 24, 2017

For their part, the White House issued a statement on Tuesday that called for privacy for Barron. “It is a longstanding tradition that the children of Presidents are afforded the opportunity to grow up outside of the political spotlight,” the statement reads. “The White House fully expects this tradition to continue. We appreciate your cooperation in this matter.”

Austin Elias-De Jesus

Austin is an editorial intern at Law Street Media. He is a junior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communication. You can usually find him reading somewhere. If you can’t find him reading, he’s probably taking a walk. Contact Austin at Staff@Lawstreetmedia.com.

The post Former First Daughter Chelsea Clinton Comes to the Defense of Barron Trump appeared first on Law Street.

Tonight will be the first Republican primary debate of the new year, and the seven candidates that made it on to the big stage are expected to talk about a whole wide range of issues. But one issue that has been notably absent from the debates so far has been science–particularly climate change. These are issues that are going significantly affect future generations, and that’s why a non-profit called ScienceDebate.org has rallied some kids to request that the 2016 presidential candidates talk about science:

The fantastic ad was created by ScienceDebate.org, a nonprofit which features a petition asking the candidates for president (and other elected offices) to debate and talk about science, medicine, technology, and climate change in their campaigns. The petition reads:

Given the many urgent scientific and technological challenges facing America and the rest of the world, the increasing need for accurate scientific information in political decision making, and the vital role scientific innovation plays in spurring economic growth and competitiveness, we call for public debates in which the U.S. presidential and congressional candidates share their views on the issues of science and technology policy, health and medicine, and the environment

The nonprofit argues that the American people support hearing about scientific issues in the debate. According to ScienceDebate.org and Research!America, in a recent national poll:

87 percent of likely voters think the candidates for president ought to be well versed on science issues. 91 percent of Democrats, 88 percent of Republicans and 78 percent of Independents also said the presidential candidates should participate in a debate to discuss key science-based challenges facing the US.

Those stats are interesting, because it does seem like Americans want to hear politicians talk about science almost across-the-board. However, it’s kind of unclear exactly what aspects of science they want actually discussed. Climate change, for example, remains a huge point of contention in American politics–according to a ABC/Washington Post poll conducted in late November, 36 percent of Americans don’t think that climate change is a big problem, and 51 percent think scientists disagree on climate change, despite the fact that a vast majority do not disagree.

That being said, regardless of how you feel about climate change (and other scientific issues) it is important to know where the candidates stand. I’d like to see the Republican candidates talk about it tonight (as would the kids from from the above video), but given their track record to date, it’s probably not likely.

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post When Will the Presidential Candidates Talk About Science? appeared first on Law Street.

On August 20, 5 million people tuned in to watch a summer baseball game, a pretty impressive figure considering MLB playoffs don’t begin until October. Now consider that those numbers aren’t for major league baseball or even college, but for little league baseball. Last Wednesday, 13-year-old Mo’ne Davis and her Philadelphia team battled and lost admirably to their Las Vegas counterpart, the latest event in a string of brushes with early fame. Sports fans and parents alike seem to endorse little league baseball, but one has to wonder: in an age when amateurism is being redefined at the collegiate level, will the public ever find little league baseball to be exploitative?

Like college football, little league baseball has seen a relatively quick surge in revenue. In 2012, even before Mo’ne Davis took America by storm, Little League Inc. had assets of nearly $85 million. Also like college football, the players are not the ones collecting the revenue. A majority of the revenue generated is used to maintain the Little League headquarters in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, as well as the domestic regional offices and the international facilities in Canada, Hong Kong, and Poland.

As the NCAA can attest, if organizational revenue increases from television contracts while players remain unpaid, some may declare the league exploitative. But Little League, Inc. can rest assured knowing its players won’t be seeking the same redress as current or former college athletes. For starters, Little League, Inc. hasn’t sold its athletes’ rights to merchandisers. The NCAA did, and that was generally what the recently decided O’Bannon v. NCAA was all about.

Secondly, the best college athletes not only earn their organizations money, they do so in lieu of their own earnings. Star athletes in basketball, football, hockey, and baseball often choose between college or receiving compensation from a domestic or foreign league. In 2008, NBA point guard Brandon Jennings chose to play professional basketball in Italy rather than play college basketball in the U.S. Mo’ne Davis et al., as entertaining as they may be, do not have similar opportunities considering minors lack the traditional capacity to contract in the United States, and child labor, even in Europe, is frowned upon.

Although it shouldn’t worry about being sued by its players, Little League Inc. might have to worry about its volunteers. Behind the play of child stars stands 1.25 million non-paid volunteers who ensure little league games are run effectively. Think it’s unlikely they would sue after volunteering to work for no money? So too, most likely, did Major League Baseball. So too, most likely, did several media giants in NYC.

Can all volunteers now sue their “employer,” even if it’s a non-profit? Is anything keeping Americorps and Salvation Army volunteers from suing those establishments? Not exactly. The Southern District of New York held fairly recently in a suit brought by Fox Searchlight Studio interns that the unpaid’s legal status generally depends on the motivation of the organization using them. Fox was found to be using interns in lieu of employees, and it was mainly to benefit them financially rather than offer experience to the interns. If Little League, Inc. keeps expanding its volunteer base in order to continue generating revenue, then it too may be thrown a curve ball.

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Andrew Blancato (@BigDogBlancato) holds a J.D. from New York Law School, and is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. When he’s not writing, he is either clerking at a trial court in Connecticut, or obsessing over Boston sports.

Featured image courtesy of [Edwin Martinez via Flickr]

Andrew Blancato

The post Little League is Big Business appeared first on Law Street.

It seems like every summer a parent leaves their child in a smoldering car to die. Obviously none of these parents left their child strapped into the car seat on purpose, but it makes you wonder what is going through their minds. Now I am not a parent, and I do forget things pretty often, but one would think that if the little person that you gave life to is just inches away, you would remember that you have a responsibility to take them out of the car. Sadly, child hot car deaths are something that we’ve become accustomed to.

In 2014 so far there have been at least 18 heatstroke deaths as a result of children being left in vehicles. Just last Thursday Police in Wichita, Kansas found a 10-month-old girl unresponsive after she had been in her car seat for more than two hours after her foster parents forgot to take her inside the house. In 2013 there were 44 confirmed heatstroke deaths, and from 1998 until now there have been a total of 624, making an average of 38 child heatstroke deaths a year according to Golden Gate Weather.

Those are really sad statistics. RIP to every single one of them.

Alissa Chavez is a 17 year old from Albuquerque, New Mexico and she has designed a device called “Hot Seat” that alerts parents when it detects that a child has been left in its car seat. She is currently raising money to build a prototype. For the device to work, a parent will have to place a sensor pad on the child’s car seat. The pad will have a sensor that communicates with the key fob, which will sound three alarms (the fob, a phone app, and the vehicle alarm) if it senses that a child is still in the seat once the parent and key fob are a certain distance away from the car.

Brillant Idea, Alissa

While Alissa’s idea is a splendid one, I can’t help but think, why? Why is a device like this even needed? Have we become so distracted that we can’t even care for our children? Is technology the one to blame? Or are we too consumed by our own personal problems? Or are babies just too quiet nowadays?  It’s sad that a device like this is now needed in our society, we need to take a deep look within ourselves and ask what kind of people we really are. And it’s looking like we are just forgetful people. Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said, “We encourage you to put something in the backseat to remind yourself that you have a child in the back, it could be a purse, it could be a phone, anything that will work for you.”

What could be a better reminder of your child being in the car than your actual child? Why are we more likely to check if we forgot our phone or our purse than our children? What does this say about us as a society? The piece of advice Foxx offered should have been to accept the responsibility of being a parent and remember to take your child out of the car; simple as that. As a society though we’ve come to accept that these things just happen, chalking it up to human error I guess. As Gene Weingarten explained it, any parent can fall victim to negligence.

“The wealthy do, it turns out. And the poor, and the middle class. Parents of all ages and ethnicities do it. Mothers are just as likely to do it as fathers. It happens to the chronically absent-minded and to the fanatically organized, to the college-educated and to the marginally literate. In the last 10 years, it has happened to a dentist. A postal clerk. A social worker. A police officer. An accountant. A soldier. A paralegal. An electrician. A Protestant clergyman. A rabbinical student. A nurse. A construction worker. An assistant principal. It happened to a mental health counselor, a college professor and a pizza chef. It happened to a pediatrician. It happened to a rocket scientist.”

Interesting…

Well put Mr. Weingarten, but if the parents aren’t to blame, then who the hell is? Yes, the parents who forget their children made terrible, terrible mistakes, and they have to wake up and live with the guilt of having murdered their child every single day; and while that is punishment enough, I still think that they deserve all of the blame.

When you bring a life into this world, you take on a whole other world of responsibility. When you bring a life into this world you can’t afford to slip up or forget. When you bring a life into this world, you should be 100 percent about where your kid is from the day they leave the womb until their 18th birthday. When you bring a life into this world, it is your duty to be on your A-game every single day, week, and month of the year. There is no such thing as a break when you bring a life into this world. There are no “re-dos” or “oopsies.” This is not a phone or a laptop or a purse, this is a life, and when you bring a life into this world, it deserves a whole lot more than to be forgotten in the backseat of a car.

—

Trevor Smith

Featured image courtesy of [Erik Bishoff]

Trevor Smith

Trevor Smith is a homegrown DMVer studying Journalism and Graphic Design at American University. Upon graduating he has hopes to work for the US State Department so that he can travel, learn, and make money at the same time. Contact Trevor at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Parents Need to Step into the Hot Seat and Take Responsibility for Hot Car Deaths appeared first on Law Street.

Since I love baseball and it’s All Star week in the MLB, I decided that this week’s post would be about America’s favorite pastime. I could have gone the route of talking about Andrew Robert Rector, who is suing just about everybody in the baseball world for $10 million because he says announcers trash-talked him when he fell asleep at a Yankees-Red Sox game. Funny as that story is, however, everybody is talking about it. I like to be unique, and I knew there had to be a whole lot of other baseball stories out there. Lucky for you, I found some weird ones.

Just a Little Outside

If you’ve ever watched or gone to a baseball game, you know that there are a lot of balls flying around, as well as broken bat pieces and whole bats soaring through the air. And let’s not forget that a player might fall into the first few rows as he reaches over to make a spectacular catch.

If you are lucky enough to get a good seat at a major league game, you better be on guard. Even the seats warn you: watch out or you just might get hit. The bleachers at little league fields, though, usually don’t come with this warning. Elizabeth Lloyd, a New Jersey resident, probably wishes they did.

A few years ago, she was sitting at a table near a fenced bullpen when the catcher, warming up a pitcher, made an errant throw. The ball left the playing area and hit Lloyd in the face. She reacted in a totally rational manner and decided to sue the 11-year-old boy (13 by the time the suit was filed). I assume she was only trying to teach him the valuable life lesson that some people are horrible and like to do ridiculous, awful things like sue kids. I doubt he has the good sense to appreciate her help, though.

Lloyd is suing for $150,000 for her medical costs alone. Add onto this all of the money she “deserves” for her pain and suffering and what her husband expects for loss of consortium, and I really hope this kid has an extremely good allowance.

The suit claims that the boy’s throw was intentional, Lloyd was “assaulted and battered,” the throw was negligent and careless, and — I’m not making this up — the injury was caused by “inappropriate physical and/or sporting activity.” And I always thought that throwing a ball on a ball field or its practice areas was where you were supposed to play.

On top of all this, Lloyd is demanding a jury trial. I think that’s really ballsy. I certainly wouldn’t want to try to convince a whole group of people that the cute kid who was playing an innocent sport instead of being out causing mayhem in the community should be punished.

I’ve seen enough major league baseball games to know that those million dollar salaries don’t always mean perfect aim and control. I’ve seen errors that would shock even the most sports illiterate. And when these stupid errors occur, I hear announcers make the same type comment over and over.

“It’s like watching a little league game.”

“I haven’t seen that bad an error since little league.”

“He’s the best at his position in the league, but that play was straight out of little league.”

Courtesy of DEADSPIN.

That’s right, people. Little leaguers aren’t yet at that major league level of almost-but-not-quite perfect. They make a lot of errors, such as throwing a ball to a place or toward a person that they didn’t mean to throw it.

There is this thing called the “baseball rule,” which basically says you cannot sue for injuries caused by events that happen on the field because, since you know there is good risk you’ll get injured, you assume the risk when you attend. Shouldn’t this rule apply all the way down to those players who have less talent and skill than the big leaguers? I hope for the sake of this player and his family that this court thinks so.

There’s No Crying in Baseball

The problem with little league sports is that there is a lot of whining and temper tantrums involved. But since it’s a bunch of young kids playing, that is to be expected.

One such temper tantrum took place recently in California. A 14-year-old boy scored the game-winning run and, for some child-like, immature reason, he had the nerve to get excited. In his ridiculous happiness, he threw off his helmet to celebrate with his teammates and rudely threw it in the air — something every no professional player would ever do — admittedly after being told not to.

Courtesy of GIPHY.

As the helmet landed, it hit Alan Beck in the ankle, sending him into a major hissy fit. To be fair, the helmet allegedly tore his Achilles tendon, so I’d probably be a little upset, too; however, I most likely would not sue. I’m not a 14-year-old boy, though. Then again, this suer wasn’t either. He was a little bit older than the rest of the players, which is why he was coaching the team instead of playing on it.

Yep, the coach sued the player for $500,000. According to his lawyer, the coach has a case because “a guy who volunteers his time to coach should not be subjected to someone who throws a helmet in the manner that he did.” What? So what I’m hearing is that a baseball coach shouldn’t be subjected to normal baseball celebrations.

According to CBS Sports, the suit will likely be dropped for the above mentioned baseball rule, but even better, the coach said that he would simply drop the case – if the boy apologized.

The boy did what I would do in the same situation. He said no way! I wouldn’t apologize to a cry baby, either. I do hope, though, that the case is dropped before the family has to dish out any more money defending itself.

If you want to do a little research, there are a lot of these “sue little leaguers for not being perfect” cases out there. I never thought I’d have to say this, but can we all stop suing kids for ridiculous things? And happy second half of the baseball season: may your team win so long as your team is my team!

—

Ashley Shaw (@Smoldering_Ashes) is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time.

Featured Image Courtesy of [Edwin Martinez via Flickr]

Ashley Shaw

Ashley Shaw is an Alabama native and current New Jersey resident. A graduate of both Kennesaw State University and Thomas Goode Jones School of Law, she spends her free time reading, writing, boxing, horseback riding, playing trivia, flying helicopters, playing sports, and a whole lot else. So maybe she has too much spare time. Contact Ashley at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post For the Love of the Game: Lawsuits and Little League appeared first on Law Street.

For years now schools have had to continually ask themselves, “How do we deal with bullies?” It seems like no matter what, when you put a bunch of young people together in a building to spend day after day with just a few teachers to supervise, you end up with some kids who pick on others. So schools have to figure out how to confront this issue, and unfortunately ome of them do a very very bad job at it.

Candler Elementary in Buncombe County, NC made a pitiful attempt to stop the bullying of a young boy who carried a “My Little Pony” backpack. Instead of punishing the bullies who targeted the boy or even telling them to stop, they told the boy to stop bringing the backpack to school.

Caprock Academy in Grand Junction, Colo. barred a 9-year-old girl from attending school for not following the school’s dress code. The dress code was created to ensure that students look similar and don’t create any distractions. So how had the girl violated the code? She shaved her head in solidarity with her friend who has cancer.

These instances send messages to students that I find incredibly problematic.

3. The message it sends to bullies. 

Removing kids from school because they’re in any way nonconformist tells kids that it’s not OK to be yourself — and that’s a dangerous message to send to bullies because it validates their behavior. It tells the bullies that there is something wrong with these students and they deserve to be treated differently as a result.

This is almost exactly what happened in Anoka-Hennepin School District in Minnesota a few years ago. In just two years, 2009-2011, nine kids in the district committed suicide. Many were either gay, or thought to be gay by their classmates. Anoka-Hennepin actually banned all discussion of homosexuality from its schools during this period. Teachers had to avoid talking to their students about homosexuality or identity for fear of losing their jobs. Students weren’t allowed to form a Gay Straight Alliance. They couldn’t talk to staff about fears, concerns, or crises they were having. As Jefferson Fietek, a teacher at Anoka Middle School, pointed out, “LGBTQ students don’t feel safe at school. They’re made to feel ashamed of who they are. They’re bullied. And there’s no one to stand up for them, because teachers are afraid of being fired.”

The case of the young man with the My Little Pony backpack isn’t that far from what Anoka-Hennepin did. By removing all mention of homosexuality from that school, administrators were saying that it was indeed wrong, and that young people struggling with their sexuality didn’t deserve resources, understanding, or protection. They said that the bullies are right because those kids are, in fact, harmfully different. By removing that kid’s backpack from school, administrators at Candler Elementary are doing the same thing. They are saying that he is wrong and deserves to be taunted.

Now, it’s important to note that both schools have since changed their policies. Anoka-Hennepin School District, after the tragic rash of suicides, started providing resources to LGBTQ students. And Candler Elementary has since allowed the backpack back in school. But the fact that this was the automatic reaction on the part of the school district is unquestionably concerning.

2. The message it sends to the victims. 

Such actions on the part of the school sends the opposite message to the victims. It tells them that their abuse is justified. It propagates a bullying culture. It essentially tells students that they need to conform to their bully’s expectations in order to avoid being bullied. But adolescence is when people explore their likes and dislikes, their personalities, and their passions. And to teach children to hide those things because it could expose them to the bullies is ridiculous. Instead, bullies should be taught not to bully. They should be taught that treating another human being that way is abhorrent and utterly unacceptable.

Victim blaming is a bad way to deal with bullying, but it often seems like an immediate reaction on the part of the school. For example, look at this story of a girl in Missouri who was bullied because of her body. According to a report on the issue, “Tammie Jackson contacted her daughter’s middle school to complain about her daughter Gabrielle Jackson being bullied, as reported by Fox News. Allegedly, a school official at Central Middle School in Moline Acres, Mo., said Gabrielle would be bullied unless she transferred schools and had breast reduction surgery.”

That’s utterly ridiculous. Telling a young girl, who is probably already insecure about her body, that she needs to get breast reduction surgery in order to avoid being bullied is disgusting. Instead, we need to teach the bullies that you shouldn’t be a gigantic, disgusting, jerk.

1. The message it sends to the rest of the students. 

It teaches other students to be bystanders. Years after taking an Intro to Psych course, the Kitty Genovese story has always stuck with me. For those of you who don’t know this story, it’s essentially one of the most well known examples of the bystander effect. In 1968, Kitty Genovese was stabbed outside her home in Queens, New York. She screamed for help the entire time, but none of her neighbors, despite being able to hear her, did anything. They all thought that it wasn’t their responsibility and that someone else would obviously step in to help. But no one did, and Genovese died that night.

When schools blame victims for being bullied, they are teaching their students to just stand there for fear of being bullied themselves. They are teaching students that nonconformity is a bad thing, and that there’s no need to defend those being bullied. And in some ways, that’s the most dangerous lesson of all, because no matter where you go in life there will be bullies. Whether it’s a pushy coworker, or an obnoxious neighbor, or an angry driver on the road, there will be bullies in life. And if we teach our young people to stand up for others, that’s the first step to counteracting those bullies. Teaching students to just stand by and watch will just make the problem worse.

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Anneliese Mahoney (@AMahoney8672) is Lead Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

Featured image courtesy of [TwentyFour Students via Flickr]

Anneliese Mahoney

Anneliese Mahoney is Managing Editor at Law Street and a Connecticut transplant to Washington D.C. She has a Bachelor’s degree in International Affairs from the George Washington University, and a passion for law, politics, and social issues. Contact Anneliese at amahoney@LawStreetMedia.com.

The post Schools Need to Change How They Deal with Bullying. Now. appeared first on Law Street.

Happy Thursday, folks! You’re almost there. Breathe with me. Friday’s coming.

In the meantime, let’s get to our biweekly session of bitching about the GOP, shall we? Today, we’re talking about school lunches. And poor kids. And how Rep. Jack Kingston of Georgia is a gigantic asshole.

Here’s what happened. Across the nation, kids from families whose income levels are below 130 percent of the poverty line can receive free school lunches. Kids from families with income levels between 130 and 185 percent of the federal poverty line are eligible for reduced lunch prices. This is news to no one.

Trust me on this. My awesome wife teaches in Newark, one of the poorest cities in New Jersey. Literally all of the kids at her school get free lunch. Free lunch for low income kids is nothing new.

Said no one.

Anyway! Rep. Kingston decided to make news out of something that’s not new — a common talent for many GOP rainmakers. This week, he went on the record saying that poor kids should NOT get free lunch — oh no! The blasphemy!

Instead, he made the following suggestions:

“Why don’t we have the kids pay a dime, pay a nickel to instill in them that there is, in fact, no such thing as a free lunch? Or maybe sweep the floor of the cafeteria — and yes, I understand that that would be an administrative problem, and I understand that it would probably lose you money. But think what we would gain as a society in getting people — getting the myth out of their head that there is such a thing as a free lunch.”

Oh my gosh I CAN’T. I cannot. What are you doing, Rep. Kingston? Really.

Friends is on my level today.

Let’s start with the first and most obvious issue with your solution to a non-problem: children are not possessors of money. They don’t work. That’s what being a child means. So, really, they all get free lunches. Every single one of them. Even the richest of rich kids are getting a free lunch. Because it’s not their money that paid for it. It’s their parents’ money.

Take me for example. I was a solidly middle-class child. My parents, being the health nuts that they are, were not big fans of the idea of me eating mystery meat in my elementary school cafeteria. So, every day, they dutifully packed me a brown bag lunch. I got a peanut butter and jelly sandwich on whole wheat bread and a handful of cookies, virtually every single day. For me, that lunch was free.

I didn’t pay for it. I didn’t even know that food cost money. Or that when my parents went to work, they were paid in money. I kind of just thought working was a thing that grownups had to do — the same way kids had to go to school — and all of the other stuff like food and housing was just magically bestowed upon people who followed the rules.

Baby me did not understand how much this leather jacket probably cost my big sister.

Clearly, I was a naïve child.

But! There was a kernel of truth in my naivety. For me, food really didn’t cost money. It just appeared in my brown bag every day, as if by magic. Nowadays, as a precariously middle-class adult who has to purchase food before it lands in my brown bag (I’m still packing a whole wheat PB&J for work, I’ll admit it), I’m fully aware that food was free when I was a kid.

I’m even more aware of it when my now gray-haired parents take me out for lunch.

My reaction whenever my parents invite me out to dinner.

Anyway! All children get free lunch. They aren’t working the night-shift to pay for their sandwiches. So, your argument is already inherently flawed, Rep. Kingston.

Moving right along. What is this obsession with punishing poor people for being poor? Seriously. The GOP is fixated on it. When you suggest forcing children to sweep the floors in order to earn their lunch, you’re talking about child labor. That’s bad enough, but when you’re only suggesting the poor kids participate, you’re talking about a caste system.

You’re talking about a world where rich kids learn early on that only certain people sweep floors. Namely, not them. You’re teaching them that someone else will always clean up after them. Someone else will always have to beg for their scraps.

Then, you wind up with kids like this boy, who killed 4 people because of pathological rich kid syndrome.

And, you’re teaching the poor kids that they’re the ones who need to beg for those scraps. Because of the social standing of their family — which they have zero control over — poor kids will understand themselves to be inherently less than. That’s a traumatic and debilitating lesson to learn at such a formative age.

Finally, there’s the looming issue at hand — the solution that Rep. Kingston is obviously hinting at, but isn’t explicitly articulating.

He’s saying that it would be better if these kids didn’t get a free school lunch at all. If we HAVE to give it to them, at least make them work for it, he’s saying. But really, his best case scenario is equally expensive lunches for all.

Folks, this is a classic case of a Republican who lacks empathy. It’s an alarmingly common quality among headline-making GOP’ers.

Where my wife teaches, all of the students qualify for free lunch. Every single one of them. These kids are poor. They don’t have the luxury to grow up naïve like I did. They know food costs money because they don’t have any of it. As in, neither food nor money.

For many of her kids, lunch is the only meal they eat. They hardly eat at all on weekends. Why? Because they’re poor. They can’t afford food. And the little food they do have at home, they give to their baby brothers and sisters.

My wife’s students are good kids. They’re smart and loving and talented, and hysterically funny. And they deserve to fucking eat.

So, Rep. Kingston? Shut the fuck up.

Stop talking about child labor, and a (not really) new caste system, and the idea that poor kids shouldn’t be fed lunch on the school’s dime. Stop talking out of your ass, and start feeding some children.

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Hannah R. Winsten (@HannahRWinsten) is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow.

Featured image courtesy of [Philippe Put via Flickr]

Hannah R. Winsten

Hannah R. Winsten is a freelance copywriter, marketing consultant, and blogger living in New York’s sixth borough. She hates tweeting but does it anyway. She aspires to be the next Rachel Maddow. Contact Hannah at staff@LawStreetMedia.com.

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