Cell Phones and Soup Lines?

Here's a homeless guy taking First Lady Michelle Obama's picture with a cell phone, in a soup line? Is that a Blackberry? Not cheap, right? Maybe he lives out of his car, but he needs a phone to find a job? As Kathryn Jean Lopez quips, "we are a blessed people when our poor have cell phones."

Whatever the case, there's a pretty good debate online over his today. It turns out that Andrew Malcolm's post has kicked up quite a storm.

For example, as Dan Riehl notes, "Salon's Alex Koppelman decided to push back against the Right over the cellphone at the homeless shelter story."

And Koppelman got some pushback in return, from Kathy Shaidle:

Salon's Alex Koppelman is obviously a delusional liberal pantywaist who can't stand to have his romantic notions about "poverty" challenged (by someone who knows what they're talking about firsthand, and is also a better writer than he is.)

More at Memeorandum.