This sometimes happens when I read the news too much: Stories start to run together in my head, and all the information that I've been trying to take in ends up getting mixed together, pell-mell, and baked up into a big information casserole.
I'm just saying this by way of explaining why I now think that the moons of Saturn should be colonized by muscle-powered nanobots. And then, once they've got a basic infrastructure in place, they should hold free elections!
Also, has anyone else seen the story of the doughnut king?
A classic rags-to-riches-to-rags story, this gripping account of a young Cambodian immigrant fleeing from the Khmer Rouge who arrived in California in 1975 and over the following ten years, through hard work and determination, started a chain of doughnut shops that ended up being a stepping-stone to financial independence for thousands of Cambodians has all the elements of a classic Horatio Alger story. Except for the ending, when after becoming a millionaire and achieving the American Dream, Ted Ngoy managed to lose it all to a gambling addiction.
It was all very sad (and you've got to read the part about his teenage courtship with his wife -- it's so Shakespearian!) until I got to the part about him joining the GOP and campaigning for H.W. Bush, encouraging other immigrants to do the same. Obviously, he was a poster boy for the Republican free-market gospel, the archetypal hard-working immigrant who doesn't need a welfare handout or any social services and manages to make a fortune through sweat and pure moxy. Ngoy returned to Cambodia in 1993 and formed the Free Development Republican Party, based on similar ideals to its American namesake. In the nineties, he was able to use his GOP connnections to lobby for most-favored-nation status for Cambodia.
Anyway, he's homeless and penniless now, and because of the gambling addiction he's long since burned all the bridges to anybody who might help him out financially (this includes his estranged wife and children.) He's sleeping on somebody's screened-in porch in Long Beach, living off handouts. Probably could use some of those social services that him and all his millionaire GOP buddies fought so hard against, since he's a little old to be spending 17 hours a day on his feet like he did when he was building his empire. And to be honest, he probably won't be building another fortune in the time he has left.
So obviously at this point in the story a little bit of schadenfreude kicks in, which I know is wrong but there it is. I mean, I'm a bleeding-heart liberal, so I wouldn't begrudge him a roof over his head and enough to eat because I think anybody deserves that. But I might make him wait in line a while. A long while. If it were up to me.
Is that cruel? Yeah, probably.
Posted by flamingbanjo at January 21, 2005 12:04 PMHello,
I just read your comments about Ted Ngoy. I read his story in the L.A. Times and was able to meet him personally. Despite his political view (which I personally don't agree with---not a republican) he is the kindest most sweetest man. Everyone makes mistakes, but they also deserve a second chance. He is a great man who has done a lot for Cambodia and many Cambodian refugees. He has big dreams for his country and really, I can't say anything negative about the man. Unless you have had the honor of meeting him, I don't think you have any right to judge him based on an article you read about him or worse on his political views. There are many things about him that the article didn't mention...just remember that.
I'm sure he's a very nice man. And you're obviously a very nice person for sticking up for him. As you point out, I don't know him and am therefore not qualified to pass judgement on his character.
However, I never said he was a bad person. I was just saying that I found it ironic that someone who was such a prominent spokesman for a set of political views that I think unfairly blames poor people for their situation and advocates cutting funding for programs that might help them find their way out of poverty now finds himself in a position where he might benefit from those very programs. And I have every right to critique his political views.
That being said, as I stated in the post I wouldn't begrudge him a helping hand. Even people who were never millionaires deserve that.
Posted by: flamingbanjo at March 18, 2005 04:18 PM