Obama makes crass “Special Olympics” joke during Jay Leno interview
Red March 21st, 2009 6 Comments
Not impressed, Mr Obama. Not impressed at all. Hopefully the YouTube video below will stay live for you all to see this, but the gist of it goes that Jay Leno is asking Barack Obama if he has kept the bowling alley in the White House. Obama replies that yes, he has kept it, and that he even shot a “126″ the other day. Leno scoffs, as if to imply the score is a little pathetic, and Obama jokes that “it’s like special olympics or something…” which I actually find kinda insulting!
What do you think?
ps. An interesting diatribe on this faux pas can be found over at bad cripple
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i thought it was bad bad bad
The comment was in bad taste, that's for sure. Even worse, I've been listening to a lot of talkback radio hosts today who have basically said on the subject, "Aw, what the heck, I say the same sort of thing myself all the time in private." Shame.
It was unfortunate, It was in poor taste. It was dumb. Most importantly it was acknowledged as all those things by the man who said. Now that is refreshing. Acknowledgment. Sincere apology. And an opportunity to elevate the discussion. Lets move on – and up.
He did do the right thing by ringing up the chair person of the Special Olympics committee and apologise.
If he hadn't then yes it would have been bad taste.
Did anyone notice Leno asking whether they were putting in a basketball court in the whitehouse too? That was perhaps also racist but I don't hear any complaints about that. I wonder how offended Obama was of that as not all black men play basketball. I make disability jokes at work with my friends and so do they. We also joke about weight, etc amongst ourselves too AND apologise regularly if we think we have crossed "the line". He did apologise, end of story as far as I am concerned. Perhaps we can just be a tad too precious at times.
lighten up and let's laugh at ourselves for a change. Life can be tough enough without looking for things to complain about