The Food Stamp Program Is An Overwhelming Success. That Might Also Be Its Downfall.
“In 1968, CBS showed a baby die on national television. The hourlong ‘Hunger in America’ program opened with a doctor using his thumb to try to pump air into the lungs of an emaciated baby. Viewers might have assumed the child was starving in some remote, developing country until the narrator assured them otherwise. ‘He was an American,’ the narrator says as the infant’s shoulder sags. ‘Now, he is dead.’ The show aired when there was an intense focus on hunger. Congress had held hearings on the issue, and the year before the CBS report, Sen. Robert F. Kennedy (D-N.Y.) made a high-profile trip to the Mississippi Delta to draw attention to the plight of starving children (and to himself, since he would soon be a presidential candidate).”