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Especially annoyed when used to sell outrage. As if outrage is something to be bottled and marketed like toothpaste or soap.
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Particularly and especially when these simplified arguments, used to sell outrage, have the ability to truly harm others - who don't have the recourse to respond.
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Take this "Front Page" graphic from NBCNEWS(dot)com (I refuse to give them even a marginal LINK for this). This is selling outrage.
You see, this paints a picture of evil by Goodwill preying on the poor mentally disabled.
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Which is BULLSHIT.
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Perchance I an overly invested, since my aunt was Down's Syndrome. But give me a second to explain what you are not seeing here.
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My Aunt Martha went to a school until she was an "adult". The city and state stopped supporting schools for the mentally disabled after they hit 18 or 21. After that they were expected to live at home (or in a group home) until they died at a reasonably young age.
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But my Grandmother moved to Orange County, where a pioneering Republican Congressman had set up a "workshop". It was in an old factory and the kids (to my Grandmother, Martha and her friends were always "the kids") went daily to work. They did piece meal projects with a lot of supervision. Things like, cleaning and reloading loading airline earsbuds, or packing the smal "business" class giveaways into the bags. And they made small change on each piece.
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Now... if you or I did this on a piece meal basis we would make plenty of money per hour. But the "workshop" was, in many ways, both a job and adult day care. It provided meals, supervision and growth. Some weeks Martha would make over $50, and some weeks less than $1.00. But it gave her a purpose and a set of friends. In the 1970s, this was amazing for the mentally handicapped.
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It also provided training for a "real job" if they could do it. Martha eventually got a job busing tables at Carl's Junior for minimum wage. She quickly tired of both working and missing her friends, she went back to the workshop.
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BUT if you really close the options for some disabled people to make less than minimum wage, what you are doing if removing their ability work at all. To feel self-worth. If a charity is going to pay minimum wage at least, then there are better candidates. Instead of employing 5 or 6 mentally challenged, who take a long time - they can employ 1 able skilled worker to do more.
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And make no mistake, employing the handicapped requires patience and love and oversite. They can get confused or flustered and don't always respond to stress well. Employing them is costly in more ways that $/hour.
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Or maybe the non-profit can't afford any workers if they pay minimum wage. So mentally handicapped lose a sense of self-worth, and we once again expect them to sit home and die.
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I am not saying the critics of this law are evil. They are making a simple mistake and discussions could change their (or my) mind.
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But I am saying that NBCNEWS(dot)com, who probably has the skills and time to investigate, is a packaging up real problems, concerning real people and marketing it like Scope.
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Shame on them.