Monday night on Countdown, Keith Olbermann quoted Cynthia Davis’ objection to feeding poor kids free meals in the summer. She asserts that churches can handle such problems “if it is warranted”, thus saving taxpayer dollars, and that “hunger can be a positive motivator” for children under 18 to get a job. Olbermann’s response?

One in five kids in Missouri is already motivated by hunger, Miss Davis. And last year, because the meals are offered at churches, the nine and half million dollars in federal money spent produced three million, seven hundred thousands of meals at a cost of about two and a half bucks each. It is embarrassing enough that Cynthia “let them eat McDonalds” Davis is a public servant paid by tax dollars, but she is also the chairwoman of the Missouri Special Standing Committee on Families and Children. It would seem that her advocacy of hunger would disqualify her from that job and that we’d be better off if she was working at a McDonalds.

Olbermann concludes that Davis is starved, that her brain is starved of intelligence and humanity. He names her, for the day, the “worst person in the world.”

Olbermann gave her a good public spanking, but the P-D still had the most telling line: “State Rep. Cynthia Davis, R-O’Fallon, is staking out a strong position on child hunger: She’s for it.”