Area woman named worst person in the world
Cynthia Davis enjoying what surely is a rare restaurant meal (2001 Post-Dispatch photo by David Carson).
Thanks, in part, to a recent Post-Dispatch editorial, Missouri state Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O’Fallon, was the subject of Keith Olbermann’s scorn this week on his “Countdown with Keith Olbermann” show on MSNBC. In fact, he named her the World’s Worst Person – twice.
Watch the clips here and here.
She was ridiculed both in our editorial and by Olbermann for her condescending remarks about child hunger in a newsletter. One of her helpful comments was that “hunger can be a positive motivator.”
She’s right. Hunger for political relevance can motivate a vapid suburbanite (who is supported by taxpayers) to make astonishingly inappropriate and inaccurate remarks about poverty and families. Read her newsletter here.
Here’s one “tidbit” from Ms. Davis that was not included in the editorial or on Olbermann’s “Countdown” show:
“It really is all about increasing government spending, which means an increase in taxes for us to buy more free lunches and breakfasts. Parents get the same food stamp allotment regardless of how many extra meals are being provided to their children over the summer. This equates to an increase in taxpayer funded food programs.”
Likewise, parents who receive “food stamps” (now called “benefits” from the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program) also do not get an increase in their allotment when their children are on summer (or any other) break from school, which means that the same SNAP benefit allocation may have to provide one or two more meals per day per child.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service information sheet on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program:
-
49 percent of all participants are children (18 or younger), and 61 percent of them live in single-parent households.
-
52 percent of SNAP households include children.
So, is Cynthia Davis worthy of Olbermann’s World’s Worst Person title?
(By the way, we do have a response from Ms. Davis. We’re going to run it on the oped page next week.)
Jamie Riley is the P-D letters editor and gatekeeper of the letters blog. Before joining the editorial page in May 2005, she was a reporter and page designer. Jamie lives in University City with her husband, Charles, daughter, Elise, and the world's best Jack Russell terrier, Logan, better known as Stinky. 
Being named the worst person in the world by the dumbest person in the world really isn’t that big a deal.
Being called the dumbest person in the world by a blogger is from the department of redundancy department.
Yep! She’s the worst!
“Let them starve, and we’ll thus be rid of the excess population!”
E. Scrooge
Safer than St. Louis… Are you ticked because your seat was taken on the short school bus today?
You know, I have to say with that last post I broke my own rule. I’ve always believed that something someone can help about themselves, or change, is fair game for humor. In contrast, something that someone is born with and can’t change is off limits. That wasn’t right for me to use the mentally-challenged as fodder for a joke against Safer than St. Louis. Sorry.
My father died when I was four, and my mother was a single mom. I can tell you from experience that hunger does not motivate, it just makes you sick. You can not work, think, or even plan when you are hungry. Some one needs to take her government and lobbyist provided lunches away from her in Jefferson City for a week and find out how motivated she is. Let her live on less than $2.00 a day for food, with no food from any lobbyist. See how she feels.
Julio–being called redundant for being a blogger by a liberal blogger is even worse. Go back to the schoolyard. Paul Simon is waiting for you.
Mr. Olbermann is irrelevant. Stop and consider for a moment that each of these state politicians has a public relations person by their side. Ms. Davis obviously needs to listen to hers. Her statement, possibly misconstrued, not really expounded upon, exhibits a political indifference to the problems of the poor and ill fed not seen since Attorney General Ed Meese. I suppose hunger could be a positive motivator… so could torture. This is like telling a paraplegic to stand on his own two feet. Ms. Davis, like Marie Antoinette, needs to work on her delivery.
What is that sound I hear? More Republican whining…
Hey, waddya expect for the CWOP–Crap Weasel Old Party!
http://dangerousintersection.org/2009/04/27/republicans-are-crap-weasels/