Everyone's Moral Compass

During his appearance last week on the "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno", President Obama delivered this unfortunate comment regarding his recent bowling score of 129 at the White House: "It's like -- it was like Special Olympics or something." Now I wholeheartedly agree that President Obama's statement was extremely insensitive and inappropriate. And as the son of parents who work or have worked (my father retired recently) at a school for the mentally challenged and handicapped, I am completely fine with President Obama being publicly criticized by all sides. One of those individuals with criticism for President Obama was Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, whose son was born with Down Syndrome last year.

However, what I am not fine with are some of the things that came out of Palin's mouth. One of those comments was a statement released the day following President Obama's interview on "The Tonight Show": "This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people." Actually, Sarah, considering the numerous groups of individuals which exist in the world, I don't really think that you can designate one as more precious and unique than another. I also won't put a great deal of stock in someone's supposed outrage if, in a video promoting this year's Special Olympics World Winter Games in Boise, ID, Palin riffed on her shtick from the Republican National Convention. During that video, Palin asks if "You know what the difference is between a hockey mom and a Special Olympics hockey mom?". The answer: "Nothing."

As I mentioned in a previous posting that, although Special Olympics Alaska requested a budget of only $550,000 for the current fiscal year, Palin exercised her line item veto power to reduce that amount by fifty percent, to just $275,000. And while the state's Republican controlled legislature had already approved the $550,000 budget, Palin still implemented the budget cut.