Charity Photo-Op Exposure

This weeks article I have chosen, is written by Felicia Somnez and talks about the recent shenanigan involving Vice Presidential Candidate Paul Ryan at a soup kitchen in Northeast Ohio.

            While on the campaign trail, after Ryan had finished a Town Hall Meeting at Youngstown State University, he and his family stopped by the St. Vincent De Paul Society in Mahoning County to get “help out” at the local shelter.  The curious thing, though, was that he decided to show up unannounced and largely uninvited!  The soup kitchen, which is run by Brian J. Antal, is primarily funded by private donations.  Antal expresses concerns about Ryan showing up unannounced being misconstrued by those that fund his organization as a political sway.

To make matters worse, it appears as though Ryan’s visit did not accomplish much.  He and his family arrived after the food had already been served, the hall cleaned, and most of the staff already gone for the day.  According to the article and folks interviewed, they came in like a whirlwind unannounced, made nice with the people who were still there, put on aprons and cleaned already clean dishes for 15 minutes before leaving for the airport to continue the campaign trail.

It appears as though this was a political pony show move akin to that of kissing babies or shaking hands with blue collar factory workers.

The author of this article, Felicia Somnez is by no means an unbiased writer.  It is pretty clear from a simple google search that she is a staunch democrat and writes as such.  Though, personally I was impressed that she did not resort to lower brow mudslinging to make an already clearly foul situation even worse.