Obama: Transcendent But Not Emergent

The son of MLK was "almost overlooked" as he worked in some "volunteer-ism" next to Obama. That line from this new wire story on Obama's day puts a fine point on one of my concerns about what I'm seeing and reading in this regard. There's all this glowing coverage of some transendent figure with little or no appreciation for any American black tradition from which he emerged.

He took a roller on an extension pole and began painting a dorm wall blue as reporters, photographers, volunteers and Secret Service agents jostled for space.

"That's a good stroke there, what do you think?" Obama said, admiring the smooth blue coat. "This is good practice because I'm moving to a new house tomorrow."

He quoted King as saying, "Everybody can be great because everybody can serve."

"Right?" he asked the late civil rights leader's eldest son, Martin Luther King III, who was almost overlooked while painting nearby.

It's as if a Jackie Robinson, a Paul Robeson, Colin Powell or Condi Rice and many others, even a Dr. King, didn't even need to exist somehow.

It bothers me as I wonder, is the nation really ready for its first black president? We are, of course, as one was elected. But she has not seen an Italian president, or a Jewish president, for example. Yet suddenly a member of what is allegedly the most held back ethnic group in America arrives as our president.

It's hard for me to put my finger on why I see it as a potential problem. And it isn't racism. I think it is a proud and good thing for America in the context of Obama's race. Though I'm also not afraid to mention that he has no real black American family tradition and likely thinks more like a white liberal than he does a traditional black American who can trace his or her roots up from slavery.

I don't know. I guess I worry that if he fails it could be disastrous for blacks in America. And don't kid yourselves - we face a lot of problems today. Anyone elected president just now could indeed be a failure. These are not easy times in which to lead.

For better or worse, I would feel better if this man invested just a bit more time in pointing out how far black Americans have come and the many things, before Obama, so many have accomplished. Maybe it's just me, but it seems to be mostly missing from the coverage somehow.

It's not necessarily negative if he is transendent without being truly emergent. There is a great deal to be said for him as a likely inspiration to young black men and women. But over time much of that may depend upon his actually being accepted by them. And I think just a little more credit where it is due to black Americans who came before in some ways might help support that cause.

He does, at times, seem to have a certain ego, an arrogance, that is not as quick to offer such insights as he might be when it wasn't written for him in a speech.

Comments

[SacTownMan]

MLK was a person who cared more about others than himself. He gave everything he had for a cause greater than himself.

Barry has proved he cares more about his own self-importance. He has shown a need for others to look up to him as some kind of christ like figure.

One will go down in history as a modern day saint, the other already thinks he is!

$170 million to feed his ego that MLK would have used to help others! Talk about leading by example!

[AJ Lynch]

Here is the contradiction IMO.

Nanny-state libs like the Clintons and the Obamas have never done any public service unless it was part of their paid public job!

As fas as I know they have never even coached a little league team or led a scout troop. Yet they admonish good Amercians and expect you and your kids to do volunteer work! Two of my nieces have done the Habitat for Humanity gig, taught homeless kids for a year in a Jesuit program. Yet you never see Chelsea Clinton doing that crap. Why is that? I bet Caroline Kennedy never did it and I bet Obama never did it unless he was PAID!

[Dion]

This sums it up nicely:

"Obama, his wife and his backers have no morals, no integrity and no respect for anything except what they want at the time. They have no more conscience than a hungry lizard in the desert coming upon a beetle in the sand."

http://english.pravda.ru/opinion/columnists/106914-0/

[JustOneMan]

I find it interesting that the media has done a story on how non-african american blacks do not like and think very little of african ameicans...Ask a black person from Haiti. jamaaica or on of the central african countries...they will give you an earfull

[Lala]

Yes, justoneman, the airline I worked for hired mostly non-American blacks. The Jamaicans, especially, were quick to point out where they came from.

[Lala]

Will they imitate Oprah?

Oprah - I've Got "Good White Folks"

Posted May 15th 2007 8:30AM by TMZ Staff

Oprah Winfrey wishes her beloved grandma was still around -- to see the "good white folks" that are under her domain.

The media queen told a group of graduates at the Howard University commencement Saturday that her grandmother's wish was that Oprah would someday work for some "good white folks." How the tables have turned, said Oprah, now that those "good white folks" are working for her. Oprah's grandma worked as a servant in Mississippi in the 1950s.

[Lala]

I think it will be like the attitude that ex-liberal neocon Norman Podhoretz had towards better off Jews when he attended Columbia U. He didn't like them and didn't have anything in common with them. Podhoretz grew up in the tough "Murder, Inc." section of Brooklyn and saw them as panty-waists. Obama is like Erkel and I don't think black thug rappers are going to see him as their hero.

[Lala]

South Park does Obama celebration

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x7ckp7_the-obama-celebrations-in-south-par_fun

[RebeccaH]

Obama, as the first (semi) black POTUS, cannot afford to let his presidency fail. If it does, even though most African-Americans can disavow him as being half-white, half-Kenyan, the fact that he is considered a black man by everyone now trumps later caveats. If he fails, the prevailing attitudes will be such that it will be decades before any black person can be elected to the office again. Despite his alleged arrogance and self-regard, he has to be acutely aware of this.

[Peg C.]

How can he not fail? He has zero accomplishments, principles and meaningful experience on which to draw. This is a person who wrote an autobiography at a ridiculous age. Hubris and arrogance make up this man. He can't make decisions, he flip flops, and he is unbelievably inarticulate when speaking off-the-cuff. He is a vessel and figurehead with a bunch of Clinton re-treads who will tell him what to say and decide. Rather than post-racial, this new age to me appears to be the very essence of racism. It's reversed, but it's still racism. This country is calling itself post-racial for expecting nothing of its minorities but that they give a good speech. This cannot end well.

[TheSpartan]

Dan Reihl, defender of the civil rights movement...urp...I think I just threw up in my mouth a little bit.

[seekeronos]

Sparty, if you are gonna spew...

...spew into this:

(unfolds a celebratory Obama dixie cup and passes it to Spartan)

That South Park video clip was spot on with all the stupidity surrounding the deification of this man.

And sadly, this election and its inauguration should provide a subject matter lesson to us all:

That any dumb clod with enough connections and money can be POTUS... and that office is very nearly a symbolic figurehead office, when the real power rests with the special interest groups, the so-called "intelligentsia", and media (Democratic presidents) or with the corporations and defence contractors with the GOP.

[seekeronos]

And as for the inauguration itself, consider that the root word of "inauguartion" is "augur", a sort of a priest/fortune-teller type in the ancient times:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur

[Anon]

If Obama fails it will be said he failed because of (a) racism, (b) Bush's fault (c) other events beyond his control. I have never paid that much attention to inaugural events, but the coverage here seems so excessive. There is something fundamentally wrong with this country when a TV personality [Oprah] is congratulating herself for helping get a president elected and covering the inauguration as if it was a movie premiere.

Obama's election in terms of its macro effect will probably help sooth some of the latent racism of middle class blacks, however, I think the black underclass is so completely dysfunctional and cut off from mainstream morality and mainstream values that Obama will have little to no effect. These people are already lost and their children are also lost. Those people who will look to Obama as a role model in future, instead of a thug rapper or athlete, would have probably always looked to a Colin Powell type.

I do agree though that Obama doens't really come out of the black community in terms of his cultural upbringing or his value system, he comes out of the white liberal tradition, Dan is exactly right in this. That is probably what has allowed himm to suceed, he doesn't have the same simmering resentment and racial roadblocks in his mind. Same reason the first black leading man wasn't an American but Sydney Poitier from the Carribbean, he didn't have the same baggage as American blacks or same set of low expectations, he expected equality and so approached everything from a different starting point, no resentments, no anger.

[IslamoLlama]

IM IN UR WITE HOZ, RECEVIN MAH INAGURATONS!

[SacTownMan]

"IM IN UR WITE HOZ, RECEVIN MAH INAGURATONS!"

AND SMOKING CRACK IN THE OVAL OFFICE! IS THAT CRUNK OR WHAT?

[Lala]

Getting orgasmic when typing the word Obama - some of the best commentary comes from the foreign press -

"Now, a distinction must be made here between opinion writers and news reporters. Commentators and opinion writers are expected, indeed usually required, to present a point of view, to make judgments. (Thus Phillip Adams is entitled to get orgasmic when he types the word Obama, just as Andrew Bolt may call for pain relief at the thought of Saint Barack.) That is their role in a functioning media.

But when opinion leaks into news coverage and straight analysis, as so often happens, something altogether more dangerous is happening. The media forfeits their place as the fourth estate when they forget their primary duty to report the facts so the average reader, as well the commentariat, can form their own judgments.

Regrettably, much of the mainstream media in the Western world have abandoned this trusted role. They want to be players, not mere observers. Intellectual scepticism, which should sit at the heart of good political analysis, is too often a rarity in an increasingly liberal (in the American sense of that word) media.

During the George W. Bush years, cynicism accompanied much of the media’s reporting of his presidency. During Obama’s term, that cynicism appears almost certain to give way to a predictable pattern of fawning support. Those in the media who were devoted to dishing out criticism of Bush on so many scores for just being Bush will award Obama a free ride from criticism for just being Obama. The not-so-secret deal is that he’s handsome, he’s articulate, he’s left wing and he’s black. So what’s there to criticise?

From my present vantage point in Canada, The Globe and Mail’s John Ibbitson gave it away when he declared at the weekend in a leading news piece that “a bond has formed between Barack Obama and Americans unlike any we have seen between a new president and the people”.

It seems churlish to ask for evidence of that proposition, and none was given. The media can feel the vibe and that is enough for them. In fact, the real bond is between Obama and the media. "

http://blogs.theaustralian.news.com.au/janetalbrechtsen/index.php/theaustralian/comments/seduced_by_the_saint/

[Fred Beloit]

Forget about Obama's being sworn in as President. The Libs have reached one of their most important goals ever. There are now more Amis working in government than in manufacturing.
http://fabiusmaximus.wordpress.com/2009/01/20/milestone/

The Final Goal (and we will be there soon, perhaps after the passage of the "stimulus" legislation) is: More non-taxpayers than taxpayers.

[WBestPresidentEver]

Thank You President Bush !
May God Bless America !

[southdakotaboy]

I personally will not give Old Big Ears any slack. I plan on bad mouthing him at every chance I get. I plan on doing everything I can to make sure that I do the exact opposite from what he wants people to do at every chance I can.
Switch to cash, try to avoid sales taxes and all other taxes as much as possible. I will no longer do any business with minorities, go to movies, donate my time or money to any charity other than those that directly help my church,I will no longer do business with people I know are Democrats. I resolve to blame everything that goes wrong on the Democrats. I will fight them every step of the way and do everything to stab them in the back. I promise to do this as long as they are in power.
To those libs/progressives who post on this site I hate you and everything you are. If I saw you burning on the ground I wouldn't cross the street to piss on you.

[North Dallas Thirty]

The problem with that, southdakotaboy, is that you'd then be no different than the libs like jharp, IslamoLlama, and others who infest this board are.

Their life problems are due to the fact that they do exactly as you say, which is simply not a good way to function in a diverse republic like ours. You're welcome to try it, but take a good look; do you really want to end up like them?

[jharp]

"I think the black underclass is so completely dysfunctional and cut off from mainstream morality and mainstream values that Obama will have little to no effect. These people are already lost and their children are also lost."

And you Anon, are a vile racist pig. What do suppose we do with them? Concentration camps?

No one is lost. No one. Pick up your Bible and read it you stupid jackass.

[Anon]

Again, dude, it isn't racism it is realism.

There are several generations of black Americans that are already lost as the rates of poverty, violent crime, single parenthood and failure to get a high school diploma attest to.

Acknowledging the level of dysfunction in the black community, and its source, is the only way to go about fixing it. Pretending that it is all the fault of 'institutional racism' and that money will cure it goes against the results of the last 50 years of policy which have taken exactly that approach.

Why you would inject 'concentration camps' into the discussion is beyond me, it must be your tendency to straw men and inflamed rhetoric that belies your ignorance of the facts on the ground.

There are already BILLION in federal and state programs aimed at helping, specifically, black Americans get a leg up. THe problem is not lack of opportunity but lack of motivation and idiots like yourself confuse "equality of opportunity" with equality of OUTCOME. The problem is not the federal programs but the culture of the underclass and that goes the same for the white underclass that has a similar nonchalant attitude toward education. But, by any measurement the black underclass is in considerably worse shape.

[southdakotaboy]

The problem with your approach North Dallas is you seem to be willing to bring some boxing gloves to a gun fight (you will not even bring a knife).
I for one am sick of it. Plus if you follow things to their logical conclusion with these guys our country will be destroyed. Personally I will do what ever it takes to keep my family safe from eviel people like jharp and IslamoLlama. You should also.

[jharp]

Anon,

Back to your original post. You said.

"These people are already lost and their children are also lost."

So what do you suppose we do about it? Let them stave? Let them sleep on the streets?

It has nothing to do with the color of their either you racist asshole. There are more white folks sucking the government teat than minorities.

[TheSpartan]

"I will no longer do any business with minorities"

Just which "minorities" would you be refering to in South Dakota?

[Anon]

Blah, blah, blah.

The PERCENTAGE of minorities on welfare and living in poverty far, far exceeds that of any other group. It is what it is. Same as the murder rate, with 7% of the population making up almost 50% of the murderers and murder victims, that is a huge red flag that there is something wrong WITHIN that community. Percentage of blacks who will commit a violent crime far exceeds that of any other group, percentage of single parent households far exceeds that of any other group. Of course the raw numbers are going to be smaller dimwit, since blacks only make up 13% of the population.

YOu can call me a racist asshole all you want, but there is not one thing I have ever posted about American blacks that is not backed up by data. While you on the other hand, choose to call me a racist for simply pointing out the truth, the facts, that even black leaders acknowledge to be correct.

The only thing that can be done for the "lost" generations of the black underclass is to minimize the damage they do to society and their own community and make a sharp U-turn in policy that will prevent future generations from being lost as well. Again you are just making shit up, let them starve? who said that, they're getting food stamps and welfare, let them sleep on the streets? who said that, they're already getting pratically free housing on the tax payer's dime. The problem is that this has become a generational dependency among the underclass.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"What do suppose we do with them? Concentration camps?"

That's what you and your sockpuppets are already demanding for conservatives.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/01/dear-barak.html#comment-145637374

And actually, jharp, you and your fellow liberals are the ones who destroyed the black underclass. You taught them to be lazy, you taught them to be selfish, you dumbed down their schools, and you taught them that they were helpless without nice white folk like you handing them welfare checks. Then you shoved them all into public housing and left them to rot, far away from your Cape Cod mansions.

Conservatives hold black people accountable for their behavior, just as they do white people, because they don't think blacks are any different based on skin color. You and your fellow liberals consider holding a black person accountable for anything to be "racist", mainly because you believe black people are inherently inferior and cannot be expected to meet the same standards as do white people.

[Anon]

No doubt is the white liberals who destroyed the black family structure in Americaq. Exactly the reason why blacks from the Carribbean or Africa have a higher success rate than American blacks despite having none of the inherent advantages...because it has nothing to do with RACE, but with CULTURE, and the culture of victimhood that liberals fostered is what has destroyed the black community. I think in truth, even Obama knows this, but whether he will ever address it or acknowledge it remains to be seen.

[North Dallas Thirty]

"The problem with your approach North Dallas is you seem to be willing to bring some boxing gloves to a gun fight (you will not even bring a knife)."

Ah, but you see, southdakotaboy, while they may be carrying a gun, we're dealing with people whose past history shows the strong likelihood of the following:

1) Shooting themselves in the foot while getting the gun out of their holster

2) Start hopping around wildly waving the gun, shooting three of their fellow gang members in the process

3) Trip over one of the bodies, then fall, knocking themselves unconscious and jamming the gun barrel full of dirt

Realize that these people are not the brightest bulbs in the box. They just elected a President who has nothing, zip, zilch, zero, in the way of experience, background, or competence, solely because he was black -- and even with that, the only way they could do so was to get the news media to clamp down on anything that even remotely looked negative about him, while spreading stories that one of his opponents faked her pregnancy.

It's already started. The leftist Democrats in the House just voted in an expansion of free healthcare to predominantly-white children whose parents were, in the majority of cases, already purchasing health insurance for them -- by tripling a tax that, research shows, is primarily paid by poor people and minorities.

Meanwhile, the poor, persecuted Islamist terrorists that jharp and IslamoLlama sniffle over are publicly praising how they're going to use Obama to exploit the US justice system for propaganda for their cause.

http://www.riehlworldview.com/carnivorous_conservative/2009/01/do-imprisoned-terrorists-read-the-blogs.html

In short, the Dems are already increasing taxes on the poor to buy goodies for the rich, and they're setting up to allow themselves to be publicly humiliated by terrorists who are taking full advantage of the liberal left's willingness to support anything as long as it's anti-American.

Trust me, the boxing gloves are all you'll need.

[jharp]

"The only thing that can be done for the "lost" generations of the black underclass is to minimize the damage they do to society and their own community and make a sharp U-turn in policy"

More brilliance from our genius racist, Anon.

Could you be more specific. Just what do you mean? End food stamps? End housing assistance? For white trash too? It ain't like we're driving a car down the highway and can just turn around. Birdbrain.

[Anon]

Sharp U turn in policy.

Start kicking people out of public housing who are convicted of crimes. You would be shocked at just how effective this simple exercise would be in improving the lives of the law abiding poor people who don't do drugs, sell drugs or join gangs. No more excuses or loopholes.

Create a disincentive for women already on welfare with children to have more children, e.g. they don't get more money the more children they have, teenage girls don't get their own apartment if they have a baby. Again, use the welfare system to SUPPORT intact familes instead of having it support single motherhood.

End racial preferences and make all aid to the poor needs based, not race based.

Hold teachers and schools accountable, financially for success or failure. Schools that succeed get more money, schools that fail get less money. Overwhelmingly minority schools are run by minority principles and teachers, which is why we let them continue to fail and blame it on some kind of outside unseeable unknowable racism, because we are afraid to hold black people accountable for failure. I guarantee you that if inner city schools were still controlled by white people this level of abject failure would NEVER be tolerated.

Stop directing all the money toward the children and redirect toward the parents, where it might do some good. You can give a child all the hot breakfasts and free lunches you want to, but if he goes home to a house where nobody makes him do homework then it is all pointless. The problem is that it is a viscious cycle that our policies continue to feed because we hold no one accountable...poor teenagers have babies and no education, then we act surprised that their children grow up poor and uneducated too.

End the war on drugs that disproportionately affects inner city blacks.

Redirect war on terror monies back to the cities to fight gangs and crime that actually occures rather than imaginary crimes that people are afraid might occur.

It is a very complicated problem that will take decades to rectify, but certainly continuing down the path of failing to hold the black community accountable for its own failures and continuing polices that support the destruction of the family unit are only going to result in more people lost.

[North Dallas Thirty]

What we have to consider, though, anon, is that jharp and his ilk don't WANT to end the problems of the black underclass.

Think about it. What they have now is a group of people totally helpless, dependent on government for everything they need, uneducated, and willing to resort to violence. They make excellent cannon fodder for street battles, pathos for propaganda films, and reliable voting blocs.

Give them jobs and they won't be dependent on the government. Get them out of public housing, and they'll figure out not all whites hate black people. Get them paying taxes and dealing with government bureaucracy, and they'll stop thinking that the government is perfect.

In other words, it would be the death knell of the Democrat Party.

That's the reason why Nancy Pelosi, Teddy/Caroline Kennedy, George Soros, and the other multimillionare/billionaire Democrats don't just write checks out of their own wealth; aside from actually costing them money, it would fix the problem. Putting a stumbling, inflexible government bureaucracy in place, though, allows them to claim they're "doing something" while virtually ensuring nothing wil be done.

[Anon]

I don't believe that, I know some people do, but I think it is the typical liberal mindset that everyone is a victim and typical liberal guilt about the status of blacks 150 years ago/50 years...being in "solidarity" with their black brothers and reflexively condemning society and agreeing that some type of payback is due American blacks is part of what it means to be a liberal today...which shows how far liberalism itself has fallen in the last 50 years.

This is why jharp and every other liberal out there reflexively calls anyone who doesn't agree that Obama is fantastic, or that American blacks are victims of unprecedented racism as "racists"...they say it without thinking or reasoning.

You might make a better case that black leaders themselves have a vested interest in keeping blacks tied to the inner cities and the ghetto and the handouts from government because if black people ever re-identified as just Americans or 'middle class' or anything that didn't put race at the forefront, then all of these black power bases would crumble and American blacks like every other ethnic group would meld into the wider society and start having mulitple ways of identifying themselves instead of the single race based identity they have now...but I think even these people don't do it knowingly, but reflexively...they've been hating white society for so long, they don't know any other way to see the world.

[jharp]

"Stop directing all the money toward the children and redirect toward the parents, where it might do some good. You can give a child all the hot breakfasts and free lunches you want to, but if he goes home to a house where nobody makes him do homework then it is all pointless."

Never mind that is the only decent meal many receive. So I guess your idea is to starve em. Only the children though.

You are a sick twisted vile person.

"I guarantee you that if inner city schools were still controlled by white people this level of abject failure would NEVER be tolerated."

You are a racist asshole, asshole. It has nothing to do with the color of anyone's skin. Do ya think being poor might have something to do with it?

[Peg C.]

It was said by the Drive-Bys that if Obama was not elected it would mean this country is still racist. I guess now we're not? I'm confused. Who is supposedly racist? I guess it depends on how you define it. I don't believe in thought control (or social engineering), only in people's actions. I believe approximately 50% of white people voted for a black man, and 95% of black people voted for a black man. It is blacks who are ruled by racism in this country now; whites appear to be over it. But, could a conservative black man or woman get elected president? Look at how liberals treated Condi Rice and Clarence Thomas. Racism is alive and well (as it has always been) in the Democrat party. Forget "the soft bigotry of low expectations" - this is the soft bigotry of no expectations.

[Anon]

Why would a free lunch or a hot breakfast be the 'only decent' meal that a child receives?????????????

Their parents are already getting welfare and food stamps, so if the only decent meal they are getting is at school then that is the fault of the parents because the government has provided them with ample money and credit to get whatever groceries are needed. Again, the problem is parenting.

You may be the single most stupid individual I have ever encountered online.

The fact of failure doesn't have to do with race, but the fact that failure is TOLERATED has everything to do with race. It is exactly the same reason that college admission standards are different for blacks than for whites and asians, same reason that in many cases job application standards are different for blacks than for whites and asians.

I am not the one who continues to believe in RACE BASED metrics, I believe in race BLIND metrics, that everyone regardless of their race should be evaluated on their achievements or lack thereofs. I don't make excuses for anyone, black, white or green.

I don't have such low expectations of black people that I don't believe they can compete with me, or that they should be held to the same standards that I am.

I will repeat what I said, that if whites were still in charge of majority black schools this level of failure would never be tolerated, it is only because white society is afraid to say that ANY black anywhere has failed at anything that the inner city schools continue to cost more and produce less year after year. That is racism, absolutely, but not the kind you mean.

[jharp]

"Why would a free lunch or a hot breakfast be the 'only decent' meal that a child receives?????????????"

Because he is poor. And his parents are poor. You imbecile.

"Their parents are already getting welfare and food stamps"

And you know this how?

You are an ignorant fool. Turn of Limbo, Hannity, and Fox.

[Anon]

Poor people who are SO POOR THEY CANNOT AFFORD to provide a single decent meal a day are obviously on welfare, I mean DUH, DUH. If the family doesn't make enough money to afford one decent meal a day then they are getting public assistance.

How did you get this stupid? Do you practice? Is it an act?

[Micha Elyi]

Anon (on Tuesday, January 20, 2009 at 03:09 PM) advocated making a "Sharp U turn in policy."

Isn't that what Obama promised he'd do if elected?

Anon advised, "Start kicking people out of public housing who are convicted of crimes."

I'd rather see the shutdown of "public housing" altogether. Kick 'em all out, fire the political appointees and cronies who run the slums, and sell off the units to get them out of the politicians mitts.

Furthermore, Anon says a wise society would, "Create a disincentive for women already on welfare with children to have more children."

Good plan. Automatic Father-only custody would do it. This would also make a lot of men behave more responsibly -- a lot of pregnancies would just never get started in the first place, don'cha think?

Anon also proposed changing "the welfare system to SUPPORT intact familes instead of having it support single motherhood."

Until the dole is abolished altogether, pay it to the fathers instead of mothers. This supports the traditional father-role of provider which would keep families together; what America is plagued with today is a welfare scheme that encourages women to be - metaphorically - the brides of a polygynous Welfare State. Furthermore, when men are on the dole the taxpaying public is far less sympathetic to such tax-eaters; there's no such thing as female chivalry towards men! This would put social forces firmly on the side of keeping the dole small, for a limited duration, and focused on the truly needy who genuinely have no other alternative than the dole.