What set off Rep. Mary Franson

Apparently, Rep. Mary Franson's motivation for telling a deeply offensive "joke" comparing food stamp recipients to animals was her displeasure about a new marketing campaign to increase the reach of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to eligible people.

Here's an image from the campaign, targeting the 44,000 elderly people who are eligible for needed nutritional assistance (via MPR):

Even Republican Rep. Steve Gottwalt, chair of the House Health and Human Services Committee, supports this marketing program.

"I think obviously we create these programs to help people in need," Gottwalt said. "So if there are people in need eligible for these programs, I think it's perfectly appropriate to reach out to them."

But last night Rep. Franson defended her decision to include the "funny little clip," about a half hour before she asked the Minnesota House GOP to pull the offensive video off of their YouTube channel.

As I noted in a post last night, Franson's recitation of this "funny little clip" is far from original - this "joke" is a rash across the internet. A Google search reveals the kind of folks that are Mary Franson's fellow travelers. A small sampling of the places where this "joke" appears include:

PredatorMasters Forums
GoldisMoney Forums
Gold Talk Forums
The Firearms Forum
Professional Soldiers
Yellow Bullet Forums (Where the Weak are Killed and Eaten)
Colorado AR-15 Shooters Forums
SouthernSXSRiders Forums
GlockTalk

It goes on and on. Somebody even made a cute photo version for sharing on Facebook. Look, it has a bear at a pick-i-nick table!

It's one thing when anonymous discussion board posters slap each other on the back for their trenchant social commentary, it's another when an elected official shares it with her constituents in her weekly video update. Rep. Franson should know better, and if she doesn't she needs to learn why this is wrong.

Follow me on Twitter @aaronklemz