Poverty tour 2007

An AP story in The Herald-Dispatch today talked about John Edwards' tour of poverty-stricken Appalachian Kentucky. The story said residents of that area see politicians come and go. Some are amused by the attention.

... Indeed, poverty tours are nothing new around these hills. President Clinton, the late Minnesota Sen. Paul Wellstone, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Massachusetts Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and Martin Luther King III, son of the famed civil rights leader, have all trekked through central Appalachia on poverty tours _ though many remember Robert Kennedy's as the most genuine and meaningful.

Lyndon Johnson declared his war on poverty here in 1964.

Edwards' tour began Sunday night in New Orleans' Lower Ninth Ward, still reeling from Hurricane Katrina. He traveled to sites in Mississippi, Arkansas, Tennessee, Ohio and Pennsylvania, and plans stops in Virginia on Wednesday before wrapping up with a visit to Whitesburg and a speech in Prestonsburg, Ky. _ where Kennedy ended his poverty tour at the Floyd County Courthouse.

Still, Edwards has lost some of his credibility in this predominantly Democratic region. They don't forget $400 haircuts around here.

"A haircut's a haircut. You can get the same one for $10," said James Rudd, a 28-year-old Whitesburg resident who's spent the past 10 years mining coal. "If he's so big on poverty, then why don't he give the other $390 to some homeless person?" ...

I covered a small part of Bill Clinton's visit to central Kentucky in 1999 as part of his multistate poverty tour. Maybe someday these guys will find other places to visit. I would gladly offer a guided tour of parts of southern Ohio or even here in Huntington if they want to see a different neighborhood. Someone needs to tell them that not all poverty in Appalachia is related to coal. But that's where the stereotypes are. Stereotypes look good on tv, and stereotypes sell.