Against a certain kind of “heartwarming” news story

One of my long-running Twitter threads re-shares “heartwarming” news stories from my feed … to register my disgust at them. It started when I saw a tweet from CBS News:

HEARTWARMING: A teacher breaks down in tears after the mother of a student buys her a car so she can get to work every day. ❤️

There are a million of these. They constitute a genre. I am not the only person to notice this.

• Loyal customer gives McDonald's employee free car after hearing about her struggles
• KFC surprises single mom who walked to work for a year with a new car
• 9-year-old boy pays off entire school lunch debt for his class after saving his allowance
• Boy donates savings for Disney trip to buy food for Hurricane Dorian evacuees
• St. Louis Woman's GoFundMe To Feed Kids Raises 40 Times Original Goal
• Home Depot employees build walker for boy with hypotonia
• 90-year-old woman dies from Coronavirus after asking doctors to save ventilators for younger patients. “I had a good life, keep it for the younger ones.”
• Amid coronavirus, Trevor Noah pays his furloughed crew’s salaries out of his own pocket
• High School robotics team builds electric wheelchair for 2-year-old whose family couldn’t afford one
• Kindergarten teacher keeps teaching from a hospital room | Get Uplifted
• South Carolina Gives Highest Civilian Honor To Principal Who Got A Walmart Job To Help Students
• 77-year-old substitute teacher who lives in his car gifted ^$27,000 check by former student
• When granted a ‘Make-A-Wish,’ this 13-year-old chose to feed his city’s homeless for a year
• Students raise another ^$100K for accessible playground at Glen Lake Elementary

So what is my problem with stories about people doing kind things? Anil Dash explains:

Most of what gets shared as heartwarming stories are usually temporary, small-scale responses to systemic failures. I wish we found it just as inspirational to make structural changes to unjust systems, but I don’t know if our culture knows how to tell those stories.

This brings to mind a conversation I had with a conservative ages ago. At one point he told me that when I advocate for government action to feed the poor, I am really advocating for taxes which “steal” from him, so I “get no points” for doing good.

I was thrown by that. What? I was cheating … in my effort to get … “points”?

To him, a government program which taxes him to correct poverty “steals” money from him, but just as importantly it steals his opportunity to score “points” by demonstrating his virtue. It simply did not occur to him that I was trying to create good results rather than win at Being Good.

I realized this reading Doug Muder’s essay Who Owns The World?, which describes this as a difference between a charity orientation versus a justice orientation:

When I give food to the poor, they call me a saint. When I ask why the poor have no food, they call me a communist.
— Archbishop Hélder Câmara of Brazil

[⋯]

When people respond to your social justice talk by grabbing their wallets and running away, it’s tempting to write them off as selfish or hard-hearted. But many of them aren’t. Some people who look at the world this way are quite generous. They give money away. They volunteer. They put themselves out for other people.

But the model they put on this behavior isn’t justice, it’s charity. They do it out of the goodness of their hearts, not because they are under some obligation. And they expect the beneficiaries of their generosity to receive those gifts with humility and gratitude. Because, after all, beggars shouldn’t be choosers.

And if the amount that individuals are willing to give away doesn’t match the need — which it never does — then the charity mindset sees that not as a flaw in the system, but as a problem of personal morality. We need to do a better job of preaching generosity, not change the way our economy works.

[⋯]

Those are hard questions, and so right away you notice a major difference between a charity mindset and a social justice mindset: Charity comes from the heart, and often finds itself in conflict with more practical thinking.

But social justice demands that head and heart work together. It’s not enough feel sorry for the poor, we need to understand how poverty happens, and how the system that creates such a gulf between rich and poor justifies itself. If the system that your reason supports leads to a result that your compassion rejects, social justice suggests that maybe you’re taking something for granted that you shouldn’t. Social justice doesn’t ask you to give up on thinking and follow your heart. Instead it tells you to check your assumptions and think again.

“Heartwarming” stories focusing on the virtue of an individual who overcame a problem reflect that charity orientation. Celebrating extraordinary acts of charity which “gift” people with the essentials necessary for a dignified life while ignoring efforts to prevent anyone from suffering poverty & indignity reflects that charity orientation. Admiring rich people giving gifts to poor people without asking why rich people are rich reflects that charity orientation.

Focusing on individuals creating exceptions rather than systems creating the norm ratifies the norm as just.

A. R. Moxon names another aspect of the worldview embedded in “heartwarming” human interest news stories:

Republican: Here’s a feel good story about a man who lives at the bottom of a garbage dump and walks 73 miles every day to go to his fifth job.

Same Republican: Walking through this metal detector at my 11 to 3 job is literally slavery.

This is another form of ratifying horrors as opportunities to demonstrate virtue. In this type of story, the virtue is not charity but Grit and Hard Work.

Conservatism tells us that adversity is good for poor people, because it gives them lots of opportunities to demonstrate these virtues. This implies that rich people must already be good, since they do not need to be tested and tempered by adversity; indeed, it is deeply wrong for good rich people to suffer adversity. John Holbo’s long, discursive review of conservative David Frum’s book Dead Right finds this woven through serious conservative political thinkers’ work.

[One may charitiably read Frum as saying that] What ‘offends’ conservatives about the welfare state is that it is economically inefficient: it destroys value by systematically encouraging masses of people to behave in reckless, value-destroying ways, which ultimately hurts those masses themselves. The cost of maintaining the safety net eventually frays even the satefy net, and then you’ve got nothing. Of course, this is putting the thesis rather crudely and ignoring numerous variants. But never mind that. It turns out economic inefficiency isn’t what ‘offends’ conservatives after all, at least not Frum.

The great, overwhelming fact of a capitalist economy is risk. Everyone is at constant risk of the loss of his job, or of the destruction of his business by a competitor, or of the crash of his investment portfolio. Risk makes people circumspect. It disciplines them and teaches them self-control. Without a safety net, people won’t try to vault across the big top. Social security, student loans, and other government programs make it far less catastrophic than it used to be for middle-class people to dissolve their families. Without welfare and food stamps, poor people would cling harder to working-class respectability than they do not.

The thing that makes capitalism good, apparently, is not that it generates wealth more efficiently than other known economic engines. No, the thing that makes capitalism good is that, by forcing people to live precarious lives, it causes them to live in fear of losing everything and therefore to adopt – as fearful people will – a cowed and subservient posture: in a word, they behave ‘conservatively’. Of course, crouching to protect themselves and their loved ones from the eternal lash of risk precisely won’t preserve these workers from risk. But the point isn’t to induce a society-wide conformist crouch by way of making the workers safe and happy. The point is to induce a society-wide conformist crouch. Period. A solid foundaton is hereby laid for a desirable social order.

I recommend reading Holbo’s whole article, if only to get to the part where he examines how this romanticization of the benefits of adversity extends to Frum expressing delight at the fortitude of the Donner Party.

This sensibility is threaded through “heartwarming” news stories. Aiden Smith considers the news report 7-year-old Alabama girl selling lemonade to fund her own brain surgeries:

Elizabeth Scott purchased additional insurance to help pay for Liza’s brain surgeries. But with travel and hotel costs heaped on top of medical expenses, the family is already nearing ^$10,000 in out-of-pocket expenses.

“As a single mom and the financial supporter of both of my children, this is not something you can budget for,” Scott said.

So in addition to selling the tastiest lemonade around, the Scotts are also looking for donations. As of Thursday afternoon, they have reached nearly ^$6,000. If you would like to help donate to Liza’s fund, click here.

The fact that a seven year old has to raise money for her own brain surgery is so unfathomably evil that no words could possibly do it justice. We need Medicare for All immediately. How does one even muster up the words to describe how barbaric this is? What could possibly suffice?

Liza Scott, the 7-year-old daughter of owner Elizabeth Scott, has set up a lemonade stand inside the bakery. Because when life gave her lemons…

She made lemonade.

This pun is disgusting. How do you make light out of something like this?

In replies to that Twitter thread, one person offered a screenshot of their brother texting in reply to Smith’s tweets, expressing disgust at anyone laying a “trap” by asking what the story valorizes.

And yes Caleb. Yes damnit I so find it inspiration tha she is doing something.

Is it fair, that’s a different question. Is it fair she has was Diagnosed with that ... not even the slightest. Is it fair we don’t have free health care no it’s not

But it’s freaking very inspirational that she is at least of doing whatever she can to fight for herself.

Is she sitting around bitching and complaining the word ain’t far, she is out there during a “plague” selling lemonade.

Fair and inspirational are different things

Yes dude yes she is inspirational

I won’t talk into your little dmartsss trap

I tracked down the last report from Liza’s mother Elizabeth. It is about a year old, and describes how Liza was losing her eyesight. Elizabeth talks about what adversity is actually like, confronting her own impulse to perversely romanticize it.

Enduring hardship is not a skill set, and it certainly isn’t taught in high school economics, english, or chemistry. How to overcome adversity wasn’t spelled out in PSY-101 (Psychology Class) my freshman year at The University of Alabama, or during my favorite Masters in Business Administration (MBA) course — Strategic Management. In fact, as it turns out, surviving life’s curveballs, it’s struggles, it’s set-backs and disappointments, is better attributed to rigorous strength training at the gym, without the personal trainer to prevent injury or muscle strain due to “overdoing it.” In “real life” this translates to the realization that the only way we truly come to understand hardship is to have experienced it. And to experience it means to have lived it. And to live it --- well, you only get there through “the struggle” . . . otherwise known as the “blood, sweat, and tears.”

The untrained live by the well-taught “No pain, no gain” motto, also known as the “Oh, I got this” attitude that leaves one with torn hamstrings and the inability to sit down, much less walk, without excruciating pain thanks to being a first-timer in spin class and an “I can do this” attitude. Cause "the burn is good.” The uphill battle is “rewarding.” The “results are amazing” - “you’ll feel great, your muscles will be tone and fit, you'll have more energy.” It’s the affirmation from a perfect stranger, a trusted spin instructor fit to pick up a car, all while hollering -- “You got this!” -- amidst the huffs and puffs, and sweat dripping at a faster rate than one’s ability to squirt water from a well-aimed water bottle into his/her mouth. Or is that “perspiration” actually just poorly aimed water dripping to the floor?! The spin-instructor goes home feeling great. The “spin-student” however, goes home weak-footed and barely able to get out of bed in the morning, much less sit with the porcelain gods while “dropping the kids off at school.”

Beyond Inspiration: A New Narrative talks about how framing these stories as “heartwarming” and “inspiring” hurts people just as Elizabeth described:

When you’re bombarded with media depictions of people with disabilities deemed “inspiring” for “overcoming” their “suffering,” developing a healthy and realistic self-image can be a challenge. I’ve spent my life grappling with insecurities and trying to figure out who I am, rather than who society thinks I am or should be. On the one hand, there are stories about disabled people climbing mountains “in spite” of their disabilities, and suddenly I feel like I have to live up to some impossibly high standard to be viewed as valuable. On the other hand, there are people who gasp in amazement at the thought of disabled people having the will to live another day. There’s a constant tug-of-war between incredibly high and incredibly low expectations.

The stories which gall me the most either show us failing to support kids with what they need, or show us kids stepping up to address injustices which adults cannot be bothered to correct. Consider vin <@hologramvin> reacting to a story which is both:

The middle school boys thought their teacher was a ‘creep’. So they tracked how he treated the girls.

This story is goddamn amazing. The fact that it was boys, specifically, who saw how their classmates were feeling and decided to keep a joint log.

Middle schoolers! I love these kids. Reading this story made me tear up.

They had tried talking to adults and gotten blown off -- just like the teacher had told them would happen.

So they started a Discord channel and called it “Pedo Log” and wrote down every single time he said or did something creepy.

“This is now the official chat that we will later use as evidence against [the teacher] about pedophilia in case anything does come up in the future and we do turn out to be right,” wrote one of the students who kept the log.

When the school year ended, they brought other boys in on the project. Seriously, this is making me cry. These kids are so awesome.

totally get what they mean here so no hard feelings and im also glad boys care & are paying attention but i personally find this story horrifying ... not heartwarming ... it shouldnt be happening at all in the first place

“kids are so AMAZING and RESILIENT keeping a LOG for YEARS on a creepy teacher and how he treated girls and their PERSEVERANCE despite ADULTS refusing to BELIEVE them or do anything about it, also for years!” reads very “heartwarming 99 yr old woman works every day to not die”

there are at least 10 different points in which this situation should have been prevented or stopped. teaching as a profession needs much more support to not have to feel they need to rely on anyone who can teach (and look the other way at certain behavior to do so)

personally, in the vaguest way i can word it, as someone who was once a child who was instructed by adults and independently self-taught to monitor any abuse/assault i was experiencing as my own problem to solve since no one else would, ig i just feel very differently abt this

i think the absolute worst element of this is the adults/parents not believing them despite their efforts

Enough.

I read all of these stories the way Pookleblinky does:

Every heartwarming human interest story in america is like “he raised ^$20,000 to keep 200 orphans from being crushed in the orphan-crushing machine” and then never asks why an orphan-crushing machine exists or why you’d need to pay to prevent it from being used. And then, when you ask why the orphan-crushing machine even exists, americans act bewildered that the large hydraulic device with a chute labelled insert orphans here could be mistaken for an orphan-crushing machine

“You put orphans in, as the label suggests. It crushes them. It’s even named the Orphanhammer 2000.”

Only if you’re foolish enough to put orphans in it, the american responds.

And if you ask why they, knowing this, continue to put orphans into the orphan-crushing machine, the american will be baffled at the idea that you wouldn’t use an orphan-crushing machine.

“It’s right there. Would be a waste if you didn’t use it.”

We don’t need to stop telling stories about people stepping up to care for each other. I love those.

But let’s stop it with the stories which let us off the hook for solving problems.