Why do the poor so rarely make the news?

E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington post Writers Group

Friday, August 31, 2007

WHO COULD NOT guffaw over the news that Leona Helmsley left her dog "Trouble" a $12 million trust fund while cutting two of her grandchildren out of her will? The queen of mean, as the tabloids called her, commanded that when "Trouble dies, her remains shall be buried next to my remains in the Helmsley mausoleum."

But maybe Helmsley's obsessions aren't as different from our own as we'd like to think. Consider the contrast between the extravagant coverage afforded NFL quarterback Michael Vick for his guilty plea on a federal dog fighting charge and the scant attention given a new Census Bureau finding that the number of Americans without health insurance had risen by 2.2 million, to 47 million. The number of Americans under age 18 without health insurance rose to 8.7 million.