RI Foundation Tells Rhode Islanders to Shut Up and Take Their Medicine
The lede of a Wall Street Journal op-ed by Daniel Henninger describes its point concisely: “Barack Obama’s presidency of moral condescension has produced an electoral backlash.” The notion of this condescension from our elite betters came immediately to mind when I opened up a Rhode Island Foundation email promoting this video, which is part of its “what’s next” initiative, and which is slap-in-your-face offensive:
The video opens with a blank screen and marching thrum before the following phrase appears: “Actual quotes, From actual Rhode Islanders.” The text doesn’t specify which Rhode Islanders, or where these phrases were found. It’s just us; things we’ve said as we’ve participated in public debate. (At least its those of us who don’t fit the obvious political profile of the people included in the RI Foundation’s “community contributions” section.)
The slap comes immediately and with deliberate offense, with video of a child being beeped for reading swear words from a notepad. Child 2 is beeped again, reading another quote from an “actual Rhode Islander.” Child 3 looks up in disbelief after reading his quote. A small girl offers the first commentary after hers: “Who says this?”
Next, our local elite betters put their own words in the kids’ mouths: “Stop! … Stop complaining. Stop blaming. Stop trolling.” We (“actual Rhode Islanders”) aren’t making things better; we’re making them worse. Not to worry, though, because these kids “are what’s next.” They’re going to solve the problems of the world when they’re adults, but in the meantime, they need us to “be nice or be quiet.”
That’s right. The message of the people promoting this slick video…
- who rope all of us broadly into the suspect category,
- who include the very act of complaining on the list of things that we should stop,
- who deliberately slap us with the shock of putting swears in the mouths of children,
- who tell us that we’re merely a hopeless generation occupying space until the saintly kids grow up
… is that we’re not being nice, that we’re being dismissive. That we should just shut our traps and not complain about the treatment to which the powerful in our state subject us or when they do things like impose new fees, take away our rights, and slush around money sucked from our economy in a corrupt whirlpool (or when they use non-profit organizations to push political agendas) or blame them when things continue to go wrong, year after year. We’re just “trolling.”
Who are the condescending people behind this message, hiding behind children?
Well, the Rhode Island Foundation we know. It’s interesting to note, though, the group behind this video, NAIL Communications, because it’s received almost $2.5 million from the state government through HealthSource RI, our ObamaCare health benefits exchange, over the past few years.
So, yes, shut up and pay your taxes, you nasty Rhode Islanders, so that people who think they’re better than us can get big paydays from government ventures that limit our freedoms as well as redistribute our money.