Making us feel quite uncharitable.

United Kingdom

Caitlan Moran

The Times

Canvassers for charity make one feel frightfully defensive, says Caitlan Moran in the London Times. These passive-aggressives come out in the summer, accosting people on the streets and shrieking, “Can you spare just one minute for a child with cancer eating away at its face?” It’s enough to ruin anybody’s day. The assault “inspires an unsettling combination of defensiveness, guilt, vulnerability, anger, and embarrassment—the upshot of which is the fervent desire to scream ‘I don’t know! Get Bono to sort it out!’” I used to be polite to such people. I used to think they were unselfish souls, deeply committed to their causes. Turns out, though, most of these “chuggers” are actually “unemployed actors,” championing whichever charity will give them a daily stipend. Such misrepresentation is, frankly, unfair. “The deal with emotionally blackmailing cash out of people is that the blackmailer has to be contributing something emotional of themselves.” So if you’re stumping for your tortured Iranian relatives, and you weep while showing me pictures of their brutalized bodies, I’ll pony up. Otherwise, this wallet is closed.

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