This is so out of my experience that I cannot really comprehend it: lunch shaming. Does this even make sense to anyone who hasn’t suffered major brain trauma? It is commonplace for schools, particularly for rural schools with a low tax base such as Canonsburg, PA, to shame kids whose parents have not paid for their lunches. Either the lunch is thrown away, or in one particularly egregious case, in Gardendale Elementary, Alabama, the child was stamped—no, branded--with “I need lunch money”. This has gotten to the point that one state (New Mexico) had to outlaw the practice. Whiskey-tango-foxtrot? We have to outlaw witch-burning and ….?
School lunches are like pedestrian walk lights. It is something that civilized people do. Republicans and Democrats. Nobody likes it, it is not the highlight of anyone’s day but they do it. They just do it and they don’t argue about the cost of doing it.
If you are an aspiring Democratic office holder and you are not camped out 24-7 on your school district’s office demanding—no, DEMANDING—an end to such stupidity--then God help you and your political aspirations, because we can’t (and won’t). This is your ketchup-is-a-vegetable-moment and if you don’t realize this, you are a political moron. But even more important, at a fundamental level, if this doesn’t enrage you and make your blood boil, then get out of politics. You are a useless tool and you do not really care about people—all people, which is the basis for being a Democrat. It is not about you: no American kids should ever be treated this way. Never, ever. Plenty of kids with Trump-voting parents are included here but every child deserves a nutritious lunch and a good education. End. Of. Story.
I hope to see a time in my life when no kids anywhere are treated differently.