Miami Herald sportwriter and columnist Greg Cote, whose career has entered or is about to enter its third decade, seems to have incorporated a sideline into his work: glib, ignorant political commentary.
One such example surfaced at the end of his August 25 Random Evidence blog post. Apparently, Cote believes that anyone who has ever received any kind of government benefit or has made use of a government service at any time in their life is a flaming hypocrite if they believe that Uncle Sam and other public entities should be able to survive on less money than they currently spend. They're also hypocrites if they believe that the federal government has become far too intrusive in our everyday affairs and threatening to the fundamental freedoms identified in the naton's Constitution. Greg, who clearly should stick to sportwriting, has convinced himself that such people are "anti-government":
ANTI-GOVERNMENT ... EXCEPT WHEN YOU NEED IT: I love this photo because it perfectly encapsulates so much of what I believe about the "anti-government" crowd. Here is a man who wearing a T-shirt that reads "Lower Taxes + Less Government = More Freedom" as he thanks local firefighters for saving his home.
Perfect! People want lower taxes ... except when they need what those taxes subsidize. People love to shout, "Get government out of our lives!" ... except when their potholed street needs repaving. People are funny.
Well, some people are funny, but Cote's mini-rant certainly isn't. It's incredibly ignorant.
The object of Cote's criticism isn't "anti-government." He's anti-big, bloated wasteful government.
Freedom-loving Americans in the Tea Party and other sensible conservative movements all recognize the need for essential public services like police departments, fire departments (many of which are volunteer outfits, by the way), and road maintenance. They just don't like the hundreds of billions of dollars of waste, fraud and abuse we see in government year after year after year — and they certainly don't appreciate being lectured about how greedy, selfish or hypocritical they supposedly are just because they have used some the government services they have financed.
If Miamians and rest of us are lucky, there will be so much news about the the area's professional and college sports teams that Greg Cote won't have time to insult our intelligence by continuing to engage in his political amateurism.
Cross-posted at BizzyBlog.com.
