Attention, visualists! We’ve reached a historic landmark: we’re a political campaign issue! A projector controversy on a nationally-televised Presidential debate? Believe it.

Background For those not in the US, for some time candidate Senator McCain has been attacking “earmark” funding as “corrupt.” This is a system by which federal funds are included in Congressional spending bills. That spending has indeed grown recently, and in some cases has fairly been criticized for wasteful spending. Senator McCain has been a worthy opponent of such spending. But now that the election season is on, he keeps slamming scientific projects, like funding research into bear DNA. I’ve found that to be a puzzling example of special interests and corruption, unless there’s a bear conspiracy I don’t know about. And since the US spends hundreds of billions on wars and the military and bailouts of failed banks and insurance companies, a million or three on bears is a drop on the bucket. I imagine some bear biologist grant recipient wincing each time the subject comes up. (Neither party has defended the project, so this is effectively a bi-partisan mauling of bear researchers.)

Well, now the Presidential election has entered Create Digital Motion territory, by moving from bears to projectors. McCain has singled out Senator Obama’s support for an earmark to overhaul the Adler Planetarium’s projector:

He voted for nearly a billion dollars in pork barrel earmark projects, including, by the way, $3 million for an overhead projector at a planetarium in Chicago, Illinois. My friends, do we need to spend that kind of money?

Well, Senator, the correct response from a Create Digital Motion reader would presumably be — $3 million projectors? Obama for President! (Suggestion to Obama: kickstart the economy with a new deal of a Projector-Based Economy! Oh, yeah … we’re trillions of dollars in debt. Maybe not.)

Amusingly enough, this has ignited a blog frenzy in which the specifics of what projector we’re talking about becomes political discussion. Fact-checkers had a field day with this one, because, needless to say, that was not $3 million for a 1200-lumen Dell to be tacked to the ceiling. The Adler Planetarium themselves respond, correcting Senator McCain on a number of points. To paraphrase:

• Democrats and Republicans alike support the Adler Planetarium
• Planetariums are awesome
• Science is cool
• This isn’t an overhead projector. It’s a kick-ass SPACE projector. Hell, yeah.
• We didn’t ever get the money