President Bush's State of the Union speech team must have repeatedly asked themselves this past month: "What can all Americans agree upon?" The answer: "Ah, yes, caring for children. Why not give insurance to children? That will fool the American people for sure. Who doesn't love children?" Never mind that over 3 million reports will be filed this year of children being abused, that foster children often go to court without attorney representation, that being born in one state can mean life in a good home for a child in the foster care system and death for a child living over that state's lines only miles away. Consider, too, how a child, without a vote, without a lobby, without people who love him or her lives in quiet desperation in every state, every town, and we do not see them because only during State of the Union addresses do they become useful.
Insurance for every child, for every person, is an admirable goal. But it is not George Bush's idea and it is a drop in the bucket compared to what a true effort by the federal government on the part of children should look like. And so, we should not fall for it. Children deserve more, FAR more as do struggling families. An occasional nod in their direction is no more than using them after they've been abused by a deficient, disorganized system.
I'm not going to regale you with statistics. Articles about the needs of neglected and abused children rarely arouse sustained anger - even with Bill O'Reilly on their team. We celebrate the adoption of African children by celebrities, which is understandable if not commendable, but thousands of American minority children languish in poverty or inadequate care, hide in the shadows to avoid abuse, and wish daily for a loving home they won't have because our government does not make their plight known - nor does it show us how truly adorable they are and teach us the many ways we might help them even if adoption is not an option.
We cling to an outrageous notion that if we bring into our home other than our biological children, they will come with worse baggage. At least with those of "our blood," we tell ourselves, we'll know what we're getting and they will be truly ours. Our government does little to tear out by their destructive roots this and other misguided mythologies about American foster children.
Our heads are on backwards when it comes to small ones who need us at home to care about them. And if George Bush thinks he can suddenly become Dr. Jekyll by throwing a few dollars at struggling families with little children, then he is no better than Charlotte Bronte's pompous, imperious, despicable Mr. Brocklehurst who placed a small Jane Eyre in ignominious isolation, yet patted the heads of a chosen few to deceitfully suggest his love for all children.
Let's not allow such shallow gestures to distract from the 88 people who died in a Baghdad market yesterday. Let's not allow a myopic man who is about to send 21,500 troops into harm's way, despite the objections of men like Senator John Warner who must know if there is something we don't know that makes this senseless act sensible. No, this is a man bent on achieving his own distorted dreams - one not above using the needs of desperate children and poor families, or whatever pulls at our heartstrings and briefly heavies our purses, to make us say, "Perhaps he is indeed Dr. Jekyll and not the Mr. Hyde we suspected."
No, let's not fall for that.