VLVL2 Zoyd's work

[joeallonby]

Hey Doug,

Got anything on the Bush the Smarter Administration suppressing its own
report on transfer funds? As I recall, the demographic and geographic
distribution of federally subsidized welfare monies proved that the image of
urban welfare witches having babies for cash was a statistical myth. Welfare
distribution turned out to be drastically skewed to rural white folk. That
didn't fit with the Republican agenda, so they suppressed their own study.

on 7/29/03 11:25 AM, pynchonoid at pynchonoid at yahoo.com wrote:

> --- Paul Nightingale <isread at btopenworld.com> wrote:
>> that does make him,
>> inevitably, much as it
>> pains us to admit it, a welfare cheat.
> 
> Interesting commentary, Paul, thanks.
> 
> The concept of a "welfare cheat" is not a judgement
> that the novel makes about Zoyd -- it comes out of the
> Reagan-Bush Administration  (actually, part of that
> Administration's broader effort to malign minorities,
> especially black, who were assumed not to making the
> right sort of contribution to the Gross National
> Product), a government that assumes neofascist
> proportions in Vineland. Also recall Pynchon's own
> distinction between outlaw and criminal, which he
> details in his Stone Junction Intro.  If anybody is
> "cheating" here, it's the government which has broken
> the rules (i.e., Bill of Rights) in lending itself to
> Brock's abuse vis-a-vis Zoyd.
> 
> More generally, the concept of getting something for
> nothing, getting paid without doing honest work, and
> the attendant negative moral judgements, comes out of
> the hard-shell Puritan philosophy that, if not an
> absolute evil in Pynchon's work, creates many
> problems. 
> 
> 
> =====
> <http://www.pynchonoid.org/>
> 
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