SC Lt Gov. Andre Bauer--A Personal Note

In Fall of 1961 I was quixotically enrolled as a freshman at the University of St Thomas in Houston, TX.  My father was stricken with lung cancer and I wound up dropping out.  My father had exhausted all his vacation time and sick leave and had to go on Leave-Without-Pay.   Fortunately, the tiny apartment we lived in was provided for by the City of Houston rent-free, so that was not an issue.  My mother's energies were completely absorbed in caring for my father and in any case I doubt she would have been able to get a job if her life depended on it. (Not a slam against my mother--it was the times and our class situation).    My father survived the operation and managed to live on to damn near the five-year survival mark.   I managed to get on with the U.S. Post Office in January of 1961, but there was a month or two hiatus between becoming employed and actually receiving a check.  It was during this time that we went on the Federal
Commodities program.  Think government cheese and huge generic tins of peanut butter.   I don't know if my parents were ashamed or not--I strongly suspect they were--I was, although not cripplingly so.  (Discussion of feelings was something generally Not Done).
 
Now here is Gov. Bauer's argument for ending government assistance to the poor:
 
"My grandmother was not a highly educated woman, but she told me as a small child to quit feeding stray animals. You know why? Because they breed," he said. "They will reproduce, especially ones that don't think too much further than that. And so what you've got to do is you've got to curtail that type of behavior. They don't know any better."
 
Well, then.  
 
A number of rejoinders spring to mind.  Perhaps it could be argued that if anyone was guilty of wrongful breeding, it was Gov. Bauer's parents, leastways with respect to him.   I also entertained the thought that Gov. Bauer is not worthy of the dirt beneath the shoes of the poorest welfare mother in South Carolina. 
 
I also took a dark pleasure in contemplating these lines from the Prologue to Chaucer's Pardoner's Tale in connection with Bauer:
 
"I wolde I hadde thy coillons in myn hond
In stide of relikes or of seintuarie.
Lat kutte hem of, I wol thee helpe hem carie;
They shul be shryned in an hogges toord."
 
But nah. I'm not serious.  I wouldn't want anything that good to happen to him.
 
R.
 
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