March 24, 2009

Special Olympics vs. Macaca: D is for Double Standard

What do I think about Barack Obama’s Special Olympics gaffe? So glad you asked. 

I would normally want to give Sleek Barry some love. And agree with Tim Shriver – Kennedy nephew and Special Olympics Chairman – that he “didn’t want to embarrass or give anybody any more reason for pain or any kind of suffering.”

And the Wall Street Journal is saying that “the real gutter ball goes to anyone trying to score political points off the remark.” Even Washington Post White House correspondent Michael A. Fletcher agreed with an online chatter’s comment that read, “People misspeak sometimes. Apologize and move on”

Yet deep down in my own Grinch-like, two-sizes-too-small pundit’s heart, I can’t help but contrast the kid-glove treatment accorded Obama’s “misspeak” with the brutalization of former Virginia Sen. George Allen for his equally light-hearted and brain-dead “macaca” remark a couple years back. The senator, too, apologized. It was more like a virtual apology tour. Apologies in a statement, and later in person, to the young man he targeted. Apologies to Indian-American groups. Apologies to the public. (Unfortunately – not to actual macacas – for linking them to Democrats.)

Yet the media – especially the influential Post – launched into high dudgeon, if not low orbit. A page-one Post story echoed charges that the comment was “demeaning and insensitive,” as an editorial hammered Allen for “bullying your opponents and calling them strange names” – the first of at least 45 articles, editorials and opinion pieces on Allen’s indiscretion. 

The Post’s coverage of Obama’s slip? One light-hearted page-four treatment, along with side mentions in an op-ed, blogs and chats. Was the president’s comment “demeaning and insensitive?” Why, no. It was “not funny.” Duh.

It’s always helpful to have a squadron of Kennedys providing air cover. Shriver’s sister Maria and her Governator spouse also leaped to the president’s defense.

More important, it helps not to have the Post weave your goof into a larger “narrative” of deep-down badness. To drag out your alleged “fondness for Confederate flags” and onetime opposition to the King birthday holiday. To foment dark suspicions that your Tunisian Jewish mother planted the evil “macaca” term deep in your brain. To allege college-era use of the “N” word and even portray a noose in a Western-themed display in your office as proof of latent racism.

In fairness, the Post’s coverage of Obama’s faux pas did provide some narrative context – bowling. Plaintively asking if the president could ever mention the subject again, its piece linked the boner to his prior bad luck on the lanes, including twirling a 37 while campaigning in Altoona.

As a public service, allow me to suggest an alternative story line: Sleek Barry’s blunder underscores that he is an arrogant yet incompetent ingénue four years removed from the Illinois state senate, who when unscripted opens his mouth largely to switch size-13 feet, and who put an even more gaffe-prone walking political punch line a heartbeat from the presidency; who appointed a team of tax evaders – one of whom offered a next-generation bailout plan that set Wall Street to snickering – and who demagogued on the AIG bonuses after having preserved them, thereby putting future financial community cooperation in jeopardy; who allowed Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi to stuff his inflationary stimu-lust and omni-bust spending packages with more pork than Bob Evans; who would negotiate with murderous madmen without pre-conditions and whose administration is “resetting” relations with a brutal despot who murders defectors and journalists and recently overran an ally (and symbolized the policy shift by making a gift of “reset” button labeled, in Russian, “overcharge”).

And who pledged to redeploy forces to Afghanistan with no clue how to win there and decided to turn the lights out at Gitmo with no plan to protect us from the death merchants there.

Unquestionably, our president is sorry. And two months after hearing him mangle the oath of office, so am I.