-By Warner Todd Huston
Today we will see the news all over the place that President Obama was making fun of the Special Olympics during his Tonight Show visit. I can only say to the center-right blogosphere, DON’T fall for it. It’s a complete non-issue. It’s meaningless. In fact, dwell on it and you risk acting exactly like how the unhinged, uncivil left-o-sphere does on any given issue.
As ABC’s Jake Tapper reports, Obama brought up the Special Olympics when discussing his bowling score.
Towards the end of his approximately 40-minute appearance, the president talked about how he’s gotten better at bowling and has been practicing in the White House bowling alley.
He bowled a 129, the president said.
“That’s very good, Mr. President,” Leno said sarcastically.
It’s “like the Special Olympics or something,” the president said.
The knee-jerk, PC reaction is to feign outrage and howl that Obama was somehow making fun of the mentally challenged that participate in the Special Olympics. In fact, the White House itself tried to head off any carping about the comment with a quickly issued press release.
“The president made an off-hand remark making fun of his own bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics,” White House deputy press secretary Bill Burton said. “He thinks the Special Olympics is a wonderful program that gives an opportunity for people with disabilities from around the world.”
Ignore this business, folks. It is a distraction that takes away from focus on the AIG bonus mess that is far, far more to our advantage.
Let’s face facts, here. There isn’t a soul in the world that imagines Obama was “making fun of retards,” or somehow putting down the people involved in the Special Olympics. You know as well as I do that Obama was saying HE was acting “challenged.” You’ve done it too, most likely. Comparing a stupid or unskilled action of your own to the Special Olympics is just a joke, people. Don’t make more of it than it is.
In fact, making this a big deal is an exercise in stupidity on its own. We all know what he meant and we ALSO all know he was NOT attacking the mentally challenged. But, if a Republican had said this, we also all know that the unhinged, unintelligent left would be wailing like banshees that said Republican was “attacking mentally challenged people.” We would all be rolling our eyes at such an attack, too. We’d all be saying how stupid the left was for making this a big deal. We’d all be saying that people need to chill out.
So, we should ignore this faux controversy.
There are plenty of more important issues to expend real outrage on. AIG, his latest “comprehensive” immigration ideas, the socialist road down which he is trying to take us, his anti-gun goals, all these things are for more consequential matters to get exercised over.
Obama made a silly, meaningless quip. Let’s not make more of it than it is because that is how the left acts, folks. They make a mountain of of a mole’s hill. We should act like the adults we are and not do that here.
It’s absolutely true that we won’t get any credit for doing this from the Old Media or the left. But we WILL get some from moderates and undecided voters and it is THEY that are important in this area. Not the left or the media.
EDIT to add this…
Folks, I get that politics is a mean business. Politics ain’t beanball, as the old saw goes. Yes, yeas, yes. But here is the thing. You may disagree, but I value my consistency more than I value a mean dig.
Remember at the tail end of Bush’s days when he needled that reporter for wearing sunglasses in the White House press room? Obviously Bush was a tad upset that a reporter didn’t respect the office of the president enough to remove the shades in presence of the president.
I fully sympathize with his obvious initial assumption that this press guy was being a jerk. After all, the way they treated him it was a good assumption to make that this guy was being a jerk. HOWEVER, it turned out the guy was legally blind and had a darn good reason to have the sunglasses on inside. Bush just didn’t know.
A bit uncomfortable, yes. But evidence that Bush hates blind people? Only an idiot or an unhinged leftist would say so. And guess what? The unhinged leftists went wild making the accusation that Bush hated the blind.
In my opinion, we hit Obama on this as if he hates all retard people and we are not acting ANY different than the left. I despise the left and I don’t want to be accused of acting like them.
If you can’t take that reasoning as logical, then your hate has over come you.
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Warner Todd Huston is a Chicago based freelance writer, has been writing opinion editorials and social criticism since early 2001 and is featured on many websites such as newsbusters.org, Human Events Magazine, townhall.com, New Media Journal, Men’s News Daily and the New Media Alliance among many, many others. Additionally, he has been a frequent guest on talk-radio programs to discuss his opinion editorials and current events. He has also written for several history magazines and appears in the new book “Americans on Politics, Policy and Pop Culture” which can be purchased on amazon.com. He is also the owner and operator of publiusforum.com. Feel free to contact him with any comments or questions : EMAIL Warner Todd Huston
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