media biased against disabled,case in point, obama on leno

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isnt it funny that as soon as barrack obama says a perceived inappropriate comment about the special olympics we(society,media) just now decide to get over political correctness?

let me ask you this, if Obama had gone on leno last night and said something to the effect of "well Jay, iv been working so hard these first few months in office,you know, trying to fix this economy and everything, you would have sworn i was a mexican," would we have brushed this off, and deemed all criticism of said comment as political correctness gone "amuck"? my answer, i resounding HELL NO. had he offended a specific race or a the female gender, we would not hear the end of it.

Now understand me, im not all that upset with obama, as hes been conditioned to say this. what i mean by this is that society and media havent punished him( when i say him i also mean people in general) when he says this stuff, unlike race or sex where the media and society at large will give you a tongue lashing if a comment can be perceived in the smallest way as racist or sexist.

The above statements speaks to two larger problems i believe.

1. the double standards that our society allows and sometimes rewards

2.and heres the biggy, the lack of representation of the mentally handicapped in the media. We dont have enough representation on the national stage and until we do, i expect people to get not just a pardon for saying this stupid s**t, but a pat on the shoulder for a good joke told.

in short, my beef is not with obama, but with the lack of outrage with which this news is being received compared to a slip up about gender,race, or other sacred issues.

well wrong planet, whats your take?

Last edited by shegotadonk on 20 Mar 2009, 9:36 pm, edited 3 times in total.

What exactly did he say?

I looked it up, I don't see anything wrong with it, though I honestly believe that people tend to overreact to words they hear. It's a figure of speech, I know what he meant by it, that's all that should matter.

Last edited by OccamsIndecision on 20 Mar 2009, 6:25 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think you are easily offended, and probably have been thinking about this way too much.

so far you people have missed my message i suppose ill let some more people guess

People are such drama queens. I mean I have offended people so many times and at least he apologized and explained his side of the story once he found out what he said offended them.


I careless what he said because I didn't see anything wrong with it. It sounded like a innocent comment to me.

Obama made a comment about a 129 bowling score not being bad for the Special Olympics on national American television. There are some Special Olympians who can score over 200, and there are some intelligent people who can't get over 90.

It's parallel to the comment that John Lennon made about The Beatles being more popular than Jesus Christ.

I know that I've said things without thinking, in the past.

I don't know much about American politics either way. I'm sure that a lot of Americans are probably offended.

I must be a genius. I don't think I've ever scored as high as 90 (ten pin).

There is a problem with not enough disabled people in the media. In research, too. And support services. And government . . .

It would be like having no women in the media, and having men do all the deciding on how women are discussed. Impossible to be fair, no matter how hard you try. You simply don't have enough information to get the big picture.

Personally, I'm a bit more offended at the fact that there IS a Special Olympics. I could understand for physical handicaps, but for other disabilities, I see no reason why they should be excluded from regular sporting events or be made to feel that their abilities are less than the "regular olympic" athletes.

In my province's Special Olympics, physically handicapped people don't even want to be associated with it, because it's promoted as being only for mentally ret*d people. When, in reality, physically handicapped people are the people who actually need accomodations in most sporting events.

[quote="Katie_WPG"]Personally, I'm a bit more offended at the fact that there IS a Special Olympics. I could understand for physical handicaps, but for other disabilities, I see no reason why they should be excluded from regular sporting events or be made to feel that their abilities are less than the "regular olympic" athletes.
To the best of my knowledge no one is excluded from the regular olympics, so long as they qualify.

1. There has been a lot of coverage of this, mostly by easily outraged overly p.c. people, and Republicans who want to take a shot at Obama. This is probably the first time these groups have ever been united on any thing.

2. There is already a topic on this.

3. The special olympics are idiotic anyway. If mentally disabled people are to get respect they shouldn't be segregated from normal peoples activities nor should they be lumped together in one group regardless of their various conditions. If they can play sports well they should be in the normal olympics. If not they should do somthing they can do well.

upon reading the posts in this thread one thing has become readily apparent, and that is the point of my OP has been lost. we should let this thread die.

I think that's a big one, too.

I think if we saw, say, people with intellectual challenges, we might see, hey, they're good in some areas, not so good in others. They have patchy skills, just like we on the Spectrum.

And we might see first and foremost, the person is a human being just like all of us. The disability is just one facet of their life as a human being and often not even the most important one.

Even though this is an old case from the beginning of Obama's presidency, I think it's worth discussing from time to time. And I generally agree with the OP that we too ready jump to the response of 'over-sensitive' or 'too much political correctness,' when if this had been said about an ethnic group or a religious faith, wouldn't exactly be a laughing matter, wouldn't be so cool.

I think the President was out of line. And if that means the president needs to be more of a serious, sincere fellow, so be. Actually, if things are going well in the country, boring is not a bad way for a president to be.

President Obama called the Chair of the Special Olympics Tom Shriver and apologized even before the taped show aired. He kind of knew he had made a mistake.

But it's kind of a shame he didn't know a Special Olympian himself or herself to apologize to, or a family of an Olympian either an adult or child

Yeah, that was a dumb comment.

Sometimes these freudian slips come out, maybe president was thinking this was an okay thing to say, but there are other more overt things that he could have said that he would have thought "wait a minute, I shouldn't say this, so I will think of something else."

People are inherently racist, discriminating, sexist, etc. Everyone's got these thoughts going on inside them all the time. Let's not hold the president up to superhuman standards. Maybe accept the apology, learn from it, and move on,'

Presidents and leaders are the f*****g worst. They only say what they think they should say and this is why we are all doomed.

People no longer care about needlessly offending others. Everything's just a joke, or you're oversensitive, or something. It's only getting worse too. Nobody ever thinks about those who have to hear this kind of stuff EVERY DAY, ALL DAY, and the toll it takes on them. "Lighten up," they'll say. Maybe I'm old fashioned but I was raised to not be a jerk just because I can be.

I am SO damned tired of stupid bigots assuming or desperately wanting to believe that everyone is also bigoted. No, it is FALSE that everyone is "inherently racist" and sexist, and what the hell does "inherently discriminating" even mean??

I think I'm starting to see why bigots are bigots; they honestly believe that it's normal and therefore acceptable, because "everybody does it." YOU may be racist and sexist, but kindly keep the rest of us out of your warped assumptions about humanity, and yes, I do mean ASSUMPTIONS, as we both know that you've no proof whatsoever that what you are saying here is true.