The wages of words.

• Author: Cook, Christopher D.
• Position: FIRST PERSON SINGULAR - Essay

I recently had the strange fortune, born of necessity, to take a small sip from the public welfare trough. As my income and savings sank frightfully low, this January I signed up for the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. I thus joined America's burgeoning forty-six-million-plus food stamp rolls, which have become an all-too-ignored economic indicator and an election-year lightning rod.

I'm part of what I call the privileged poor: the frayed white-collar class, growing by the year, of college-educated career professionals who are barely getting by, if at all. I make about $15,000 a year, sometimes less, working full time as a freelance writer, editor, and journalist. Everywhere around me (food, coffee, rent, public transit, the occasional bar drink) the numbers after the dollar signs go up--except for my income.

This "wasn't supposed to happen." I'm a mid-career award-winning journalist and author. But millions of Americans who have endured generations of poverty might well say, "Welcome to the club" (I should know: I grew up on food stamps and free lunch, thanks to Head Start). Roughly one in six Americans--one in five children--does not have reliable access to food. According to USA Today, citing Census data, nearly half the country is poor or low-income. Even as unemployment eases in some places (yet still hovers around 15 percent if you include folks who've given up looking or are stuck in unwanted part-time jobs), the vast underbelly of America is economically and nutritionally underfed.

Meanwhile, the 46.3 million of us who supposedly make Barack Obama the "food stamp President"--even though the rolls and benefit rates shot up more sharply under George W. Bush--have joined immigrants among the top ranks of Republican scapegoats.

Following a piece I wrote about "joining food stamp nation" for Salon.com--a 1,600-word essay for which, ironically, I was offered a whopping $150, though I pushed them to $250--I was treated to a predictable blizzard of judgment by hundreds of commenters. Why didn't this "loser," one asked, get a real job like everyone else? How did I have the audacity to be a "progressive journalist" and then ask for public assistance? How dare I purchase organic chicken and farmer's market vegetables, not to mention the occasional cigarette (I know I shouldn't) and then dip into the federal treasury?

One distressed commenter wrote: "Organic chicken? Farmers' market vegetables? I feel like you're not the...