I am a little late with this post, as the Oprah episode in question aired back on February 25th, but my lovely bride has quite a stack of unviewed episodes of Oprah on the DVR, so she got around to watching that particular episode just the other day.
I happened to be in the living room that afternoon when my wife sat down to watch Oprah - I usually retire to the office and do some blogging - but what was unique about this particular episode was that it was shot in my city of residence, Sacramento. Oprah had her investigative reporter, Lisa Ling (who is from Sacramento) do a story on the newly homeless here in the capital city. These newly homeless apparently had homes until the recent downturn with the economy. Not surprisingly, Oprah and her producers tried their best to make these Sacramentans look as sympathetic as possible, but I thought that "pathetic" was a more fitting adjective.
One family in particular caught my attention. Favor and Ryan Whitesides and their three children became homeless last year when the bank foreclosed upon their house due to the Whitesides' inability to make their payments. Now, Favor and the three kids walk the streets in an unsavory section of Sacramento because it is near the Loaves and Fishes homeless shelter where they spend their nights and the kids attend school.
I'm sure that if Oprah could have left it at that, she would have, because with each new piece of information about this family, my B***S*** detector began to go into overdrive. First, it was revealed that only the wife and the three kids, ages 13, 11, and 9, have to walk the streets and sleep in shelters with their worldly possessions in garbage bags. The husband lives in an apartment with friends. Way to live up to your husbandly and fatherly duties there, Ryan.
Next, it was revealed that the Whitesides had an adjustable rate mortgage. Disagree with me if you wish, but unless you have some damn unique circumstances, the necessity of an ARM means you shouldn't even be buying a house in the first place.
Next, it was revealed that until they lost their jobs, Favor was a home care provider, and Ryan did clerical work; both of these jobs are minimum wage or just over. But it gets better: in addition to losing their house, they also had to get rid of their... Lincoln Navigator.
Are you starting to get the picture?
But the Whitesides weren't done. At one point, Favor was being interviewed by Oprah's crew inside a homeless shelter. There is Favor, sitting on a couch in a lobby, telling her woe-is-me tale of poverty and homelessness - her brood sitting around her to remind us all that there are deprived children involved here. And what is Favor's 13 year-old daughter doing during this interview? She is sitting next to her mother, texting on a cell phone!
I am sure that there really are some hard-luck cases out there where people truly did the right thing but have still ended up in financial and residential straits. However, I must agree with radio host Neal Boortz, who often says that the reason the rich get richer and the poor get poorer is because the rich keep making wise choices that make them richer, and the poor keep making unwise choices that make them poorer.
Too bad Oprah, Lisa Ling, and the rest of the Oprah crew were too cowardly to question any of the unwise choices of the family that they hoisted up as the poster children of homelessness in Sacramento.
Good Day to You, Sir
"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free... it expects what never was, and never will be." --Thomas Jefferson
6 comments:
My husband and I watched it up to the point to where Lisa went out to the tent city and started interviewing the lady that admitted eating out of other people's garbage cans. It got too pathetic at this point.
But the part that irked me was when Lisa was sitting with Favor's son and mentioned that the next day was his birthday. "What do you want for your birthday?" she asked. "Maybe just a cake and love from my family." was this 10 year old's response. Touching. But was she done? No. She asked what he got last year and he said a Wii but that they had to sell that. Then the killer question.... "So how do you feel about spending your birthday in a homeless shelter?". What did she think he would say? Can you say "cry for the cameras little boy". But he didn't so she settled for a zoom in shot to his face. I feel for the children, but to exploit them for ratings was disguisting. We felt like vultures at a car accident watching it. That's why we turned it off.
I wonder if Oprah bought them a new refridgerator.
T
If I and my family became homeless, the first thing I would give up, after tobacco and alcohol, would be the kids' texting. Good grief.
That hubby lives in an apartment while his family walks the streets--I can think of nothing lower.
I have known Ryan Whitesides for over 12 years, Okay, Ryan, Favor’s husband, lost his mother a few years ago. But he was given her house and a large some of cash. Basically he was set for life because he also had a good job that was paying him well. Then he met Favor. She took advantage of his state of mind. She was a one night stand that found out about his money. She took advantage of his remorse over losing his mother. She forced him to cut all his friends out of his life because we where telling him what she was up to. She had him take a mortgage out on the house that his mother had left him. She caused him to lose his job. She had him pay over 18,000$ for her breast enhancement. He ended up losing his house. She lost her car last year because she was driving extremely drunk and crashed her car. They have bounced around Sacramento from house to house because of their drinking problems.
We have not scene Ryan in over two years since Favor had him cut us out of his life. Then a month ago Ryan showed up with no where to go with only the cloths on his back. Turned out that they were staying in a hotel on Madison & 80. Ryan woke up to find that Favor had left with everything, they had a truck full of all their belongings since they were supposedly waiting to move into a duplex. Also she took the 1100 dollars that they were going to use to move into the duplex. All he had left was his pants and a pair of shoes. He had to go into the lost and found to get a shirt to wear. He ended up walking 5 miles to his old work were a few of my friends still work at. They called me and let me know the situation and I had them let Ryan know he could stay at my house until he could get back on his feet. It turned out that Favor had moved in with another man that she had been seeing behind Ryan's back. But a few weeks later the man she had moved in with was put into jail due to domestic violence. And that is why she ended up homeless.
After staying at my place for 2 months he just disappeared from my house. I came home from work and all the stuff we had gotten him was gone. Cloths, food, bathroom supplies were all gone. He told us nothing just disappeared. He still has the key to my house, and a friend of mine let him use his work phone and has not returned it to him. And come to find out a friend of mine saw him on St. Patrick’s Day downtown drinking at the bars with Favor. When he saw my friend, he and Favor took of running. So basically he has burned all his bridges with his friends and when Favor cuts him loose again he will have no where to go.
To Anonymous Tipster,
Wow! The story of this family is even more sordid than I realized. Thank you for filling in a lot of informative - and unsurprising - blanks.
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