The problem with John McCain Twittering “pork” that, if he ever bothered to look at it, would turn out to be worthwhile, and Maureen Dowd thinking that it’s so funny is this: McCain and Dowd are making the “everyone else is just like me” error. Because Maureen Dowd and John McCain are silly, stupid, mean-spirited people who think that working hard on something worthy is stupid and a waste of time, they assume everyone else thinks that way, too. Because Dowd takes a hefty paycheck to engage in idle gossip and pass that off as political analysis, she probably does think the people receiving these funds must be doing the same thing. (McCain probably doesn’t even care—-things like research and helping people aren’t real work. The only real work is screwing over the poor and patting yourself on the back.) Dowd’s column is especially lazy, as half of it is just copy/paste examples of McCain’s misanthropy, anti-intellectualism, and the hatred Dowd shares for people who do real work.
• $2.1 million for the Center for Grape Genetics in New York. “quick peel me a grape,” McCain twittered.
• $1.7 million for a honey bee factory in Weslaco, Tex.
• $1.7 million for pig odor research in Iowa.
• $1 million for Mormon cricket control in Utah. “Is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?” McCain tweeted.