When Push Comes to Shove

I recently finished Push and had hoped to see Precious before the Golden Globes, but that didn’t happen. Hopefully I catch it before the Academy Awards.

Push was a short read, but a really hard read -- for those of you that read it or saw it or know anything about it, you know what I am talking about. And it took awhile to get used to the dialect. But by the end, I was just overwhelmed by the strength of the main character Precious.

In my many years of arguing with idiots I have heard time and time again that poor people don’t have it any harder than rich people when it comes to opportunities to enrich themselves.

That and people on welfare are just lazy.

And while I know that this wasn’t a true story, given Sapphire’s background, as a reading and writing teacher in Harlem, I can’t help but wonder how much of this story isn’t true. Even if only 50 percent of it is based on reality then I think it makes one heck of an argument against the poor-people-are-poor-because-they-want-to-be argument.

Now, since it is Martin Luther King Jr. Day and a day of service is expected of us all, I think I am going to take a play out of Tina Marina’s book and head down to a corner in Center City and throw copies of this book at men I find attractive. Because you know if I think they are good looking they are probably Republican.