[winestock]

I haven't seen such an attitude, either. Not stated so explicitly, anyway.

What is more common is the attitude that, for example, we should put off manned space exploration "until we solve all of our problems here on Earth." I have personally witnessed this attitude in high school cheerleaders and DC lawyers.

[flatline]

I rather thought that this is exactly the attitude he was parodying - calls to defund seemingly frivolous research, things that have no immediately obvious applicability to the general public such as the space program, etc.

[mkr-hn]

Like when Sarah Palin decried fruit fly research in a portion of a speech where she was talking about the need to fund autism research.