By Barb Shelly, Kansas City Star editorial page columnist

Honestly, I was going to sit out the Cynthia Davis kerfuffle. The Republican Missouri House member from St. Charles County has been making bizarre pronouncements for years. Birth control promotes promiscuous behavior -- remember that one?

So when she said in her newsletter that she opposed summer nutrition programs for impoverished children, and that "hunger can be a motivating factor," I chalked it up to Davis being Davis.

But that was weeks ago, and the story has caught fire in the blogosphere and on cable TV, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann calling her the "worst person in the world."

Now Davis has defended herself in this piece in the Springfield News Leader.

It includes this observation:

Look into your own heart and ask, "What made a difference in my life as a child?" Was it standing in line for a cafeteria style meal at school or was it sitting around the kitchen table with your family? Government should not take the care of their children from them. The right way to help is treat the root cause, not the symptom. We must support parents in providing for their children, not circumvent them.

In Davis's skewed world, every household has two parents, no one is unemployed and Mom is available to feed the kids lunch at home when school is out for the summer.

She wants to treat the "root cause" of impoverished families' problems, not acknowledging that said root cause just might be poverty itself.

Nor does Davis propose how she would go about treating the "root cause." Don't suggest food stamps, because she doesn't like that program either.

I wouldn't call Davis the worst person in the world. I just wish she didn't serve in the Missouri Legislature.

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