If the migrant crisis were covered like new stadiums

"Investment in poor people is viewed as waste" [View this email in your browser]( [READER Logo]( Daily Reader | February 13, 2024 Imagine if you will a world in which the mainstreams covered the so-called migrant crisis like it was the unveiling of a new Chicago White Sox baseball park. I know this is hard to imagine, because the latter involves the rich and the former, the poor. The mainstream media—newspapers, radio, and TV—have been programmed to treat rich people with deference bordering on adoration and poor people with contempt bordering on hate. As in, “Hurry up and go so we can do something else with the neighborhood in which you live.” But still, for the sake of this exercise, imagine. For starters, the “migrant crisis” would not be cast as a crisis. No, it would be billed as an opportunity to do great things for Chicago. And money would be no object. The mainstreams would be making sweeping, unsubstantiated claims of benefits that the migrants would bring. Thousands of temporary construction jobs: for rehabbing old buildings or constructing new ones for the incoming residents And then they’d make bold claims of “even more permanent jobs to follow” in the sure-to-be booming economy once abandoned land had been put back to good use. There would be optimistic projections of neighborhoods transformed. They’d try to win you over with glossy renderings of lovely housing lived in by happy people. Most importantly, there would be no mention of public cost, as though all these undertakings would be free. The picture the mainstreams would paint would be like saying you could go to an expensive steakhouse and order whatever you want, wine and drinks included. Money would be no object. The news would be choreographed to make people so breathless with expectations that “migrant envy” would set in. Mayors from other cities would send messages to Texas, saying, “Please, Governor Abbott, send us some migrants, too.” Now—think of how the new influx of migrants is actually covered. Again, the situation is always called a crisis—a bottomless barrel of misery from which there is no escape. We’re routinely bombarded with images of rooms filled with angry residents—Black, white, Asian, and Hispanic—shrieking the talking points they learned from Trump. We don’t want them! Send them back! They’re not welcome! Build a wall! Reporters would constantly remind us of how much “they” (the migrants) cost “us” in taxes, or how much “they” add to the burden of the already overburdened taxpayers. Oh, if only the migrants had a squadron of flacks working on their behalf like the Sox have. All those unnamed and highly paid tacticians quietly feeding scraps of propaganda to the press corp, who eagerly gobble the scraps up. Feeding time on the farm! But, of course, you gotta pay to play. So no flacks for you, migrants. Like I wrote earlier, it’s hard to imagine a world in which migrants get treated like the White Sox. Or the Bears, for that matter. Especially in Chicago, where the worship of the rich and the condemnation of the poor has been going for as long as any of us can remember. Where investment in poor people is viewed as waste and handouts to the rich are seen as economic development. Our hometown, Chicago. I can hear your defense: “Oh, Ben. It’s this way in other cities, too.” Ah, yes: the old “everyone else does it” defense. Which is really no defense at all. [Logo with text: The Ben Joravsky Show. Features man wearing a cap and headphones, and Chicago flag stars.]( 🎙 [Listen to The Ben Joravsky Show]( 🎙 ◈ [The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs]( by George Singleton. 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