RKMBs Forums .::Important::. Politics and Current Events Obama Cracks Joke About The Mentally Disabled

President Obama sat down with Jay Leno on Thursday for a late-night TV interview that spanned a range of topics -- from the economic crisis to the presidential dog -- and even, at one point, featured the president joking that his bowling ability was suitable for the Special Olympics.

The bowling comment was a reminder of his poor performance on the lanes last year during one of his campaign stops. Obama bragged to "The Tonight Show" that he recently bowled 129 on the White House alley.

"It's like Special Olympics," he said.

i think the joke was in poor taste, but harmless. its one of those things to harp on if you don't like the president/actor/athlete/celebrity. i had no real problem with it.

for the record, i did have a problem with anything leno said, as he is a cunt.

however, if the same comment in the same context came from dubya or palin or rush or alex rodriguez or barry bonds or ...jay leno, or other people that have been publically vilified, there would have been country-wide and message-board-wide uproar, demanding they be shot and imprisoned and impeached and shot more.

The only thing I'd add is that it's just another example of how "the greatest orator of our time" can't think without a teleprompter.

i dunno...i think he was just having a regular conversation

Fair enough. However, a president, going on National TV, even if it's just Leno, isn't just having a "regular conversation."

for that matter, i'm not all-too-keen on an active president going on a talk show in the first place. particularly during such a crazy time. (which, again, is something someone like dubya would be critiqued for)

he's a slime ball.

Obama Cracks Joke About The Mentally Disabled

Hurm. It's not very classy for the guy to be making jokes at the expense of his predecessor.

Hurm. It's not very classy for the guy to be making jokes at the expense of his predecessor.

i think the joke was in poor taste, but harmless. its one of those things to harp on if you don't like the president/actor/athlete/celebrity. i had no real problem with it.

for the record, i did have a problem with anything leno said, as he is a cunt.

however, if the same comment in the same context came from dubya or palin or rush or alex rodriguez or barry bonds or ...jay leno, or other people that have been publically vilified, there would have been country-wide and message-board-wide uproar, demanding they be shot and imprisoned and impeached and shot more.

Not bowled over by Obama's Special Olympics joke

Despite the president's apology, athletes and others say they are disappointed with his remark on Jay Leno's show.
By Stacy St. Clair and John McCormick
March 21, 2009
Reporting from Chicago -- When she met Barack Obama two years ago, Caitlin Cox proudly wore the two bronze medals she had won at the Special Olympics. The then-Illinois senator grinned as she showed him pictures of her signature bubble-gum-pink bowling ball and posed for photographs with her.

Cox, who has Down syndrome, excitedly recalls that meeting each time she sees Obama's photo on a magazine cover or hears him mentioned on TV. Her ears perked up again Friday morning as her parents discussed the president at breakfast.

Her mother, Suzanne Thompson, told her that Obama had made a joke about the Special Olympics on "The Tonight Show With Jay Leno" on Thursday and that it might have hurt a lot of people. Cox, 21, dropped her head on the table and, after a brief silence, said the news made her sad.

Thompson tried to console her daughter, telling her sometimes people do disappointing things.

But as a mother and special education teacher, Thompson said, internally she was crushed by the president's insensitivity. She knows how destructive such stereotypes can be, and it infuriated her that an organization dedicated to empowering millions of people with developmental disabilities would be reduced to a late-night punch line.


"My heart just sank," she said. "To have the president make a comment like that when we're working so hard to change hearts and minds is just devastating."
...

Yup.

Remember when Bush said he wouldn't eat brocoli? Brocoli farmers across the country went nuts.

Obama's new to the job. Doesn't mean he gets a free pass on stuff like that.

Obama's remark has caused an uproar though. All the major news/media are talking about it and not in a way that excuses the President. For example ...

A president has to be very careful when speaking about vegetables in general.

see, i think that article is the "free pass." if bush or palin made a similar comment, your quoted article would replace the "disappointment" tone with a much stronger "you dumb fuck shit head!" tone. a substantial and tremendous contrast would separate the two.

A president has to be very careful when speaking about vegetables in general.

...

Gotta give MEM a break, however. He's still trying to wrap his brain around the idea that anyone could express even mild disappointment with "the One."

Given I was making a joke about you I didn't expect you to take it seriously. The fact, however, that you just made the above post proves you did, and do.

"He's not a real president, but he plays one on TV."

I heard that caustic comment on talk radio and thought: That could stick like glue.

The cartoon we draw in our minds when we think of a president is a lot like epoxy: It's made by mixing different compounds that react with each other and bond together. If you don't work with it before it sets, it hardens and you can't remove it with a hammer and chisel.

The image we're forming of Obama is still soft, but it's starting to dry. And it's beginning to look like a guy who is more infatuated with being a celebrity than a president. Someone who would rather play with the White House toys than get to work.

He is becoming the Billy Mays TV gadget geek of the White House. He's everywhere.

Some of the tacky Obama swag is beyond his control. He didn't ask for Obama dinner plates and action figures. He didn't ask to be on all the checkout magazines.

But he has aggravated the assault on our living rooms with too many town meetings, press conferences and TV appearances.

Just lately he did the "Tonight Show" (insensitive remark), "60 Minutes" (awkward laughter) to explain his NCAA Tournament bracket.

"Somebody said that we're not in President Obama's Final Four, and as much as I respect what he's doing, really, the economy is something that he should focus on, probably more than the brackets," said Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski - making me almost want to root for Duke.

Joking around with Jay Leno doesn't mean Obama's not working on the economy. But it looks that way. There's no proof that he gave more thought to his bracketology than to the moral hazards of stem-cell research. But it looks that way.

Even some of Obama's love-sick supporters have head-slapping buyer's remorse. Christopher Buckley: "It seems as good a time as any to ask: Ought a sitting president be cozying up to late-night comedy show hosts? ...Try, if you will, to imagine Dwight Eisenhower or JFK or Lyndon Johnson or, for that matter, Ronald Reagan chin-wagging with Jack Paar or Johnny Carson."

I can't even picture President Bill Clinton on "The Bad Girls' Club." But I can picture Obama on "The View." It's only a matter of time before he has his own sitcom: " Barack The House - The president grabs the wrong phone and orders a sausage pizza from the bewildered president of Iran. Explosive hilarity ensues."

His budget was off the mark by $2.3 trillion, according to the Congressional Budget Office. It triples our debt to $9 trillion - enough to someday make our children envy the good old days of the Carter recession. Yet in his latest prime-time show, Obama claimed he's moving us from "borrow and spend to save and invest." That's as offensive as being lectured on charity by a guy who gave less than half of 1 percent of his income in 2001.

But perceptions are not always tethered to policy. They are shaped by the same flocking impulse that makes birds fly off a telephone wire together.

And the image of a slacker with a crush on the camera could stick like Mighty Putty, making us wonder if being president is getting in the way of his TV career.

After two years of saturation campaigning, he's supposed to leave us alone. Instead, it's all Obama all the time.

Hope and change? I just hope to change the channel. Yes we can.