So White House Chief of staff was talking strategy with liberal democrats and when they suggested going after conservative democrats he called them, or the idea, “fucking retarded.”
So then, Sarah Palin is facebooking about this, getting angry at him using retarded in a pejorative sense.
Well first off, I defend any mother’s right to be ferocious in defense of her young. I call it Momma Bear syndrome. I always felt that this was what was going on when Palin made her acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention in 2008. If you remember they had announced she was the Vice Presidential nominee, and then the Democrats went after her with frankly a viciousness I had never seen before in politics. I mean the phrase The Wilding of Sarah Palin describes the lunatic attacks on her and her family better than any other phrase I had read.
For me the lowest moment came when they first started to theorize that Trig was not really her son. They showed a picture of Bristol and said that they believed that she had a “baby bump.” Bristol was 17 years old at the time, and I don’t think it would have felt very good to say, “no, actually I just had a little fat.” And when it turned out that she was pregnant, now, well, the attacks continued. Oh sure they were centered on Palin, but it required them to hit her, too, if only as collateral damage.
So Palin goes to the convention feeling that her family was under attack. And she went all Mamma Bear on them, specifically Obama. I said to my mom, “She wasn’t going to ask nicely that they stop. She was going to RIP OBAMA’S FUCKING THROAT OUT!!!”* That’s how she struck me at that moment. And I always thought in a way it was kind of charming.
But for the rest of us, I say lighten the hell up. I am not saying it isn’t offensive, but gosh, let’s be a little less politically correct.
Now I say that having been severely critical of Obama’s infamous “Special Olympics” comment. The reason why is that Obama said it on national television and he is the president, and there is something unseemly about the most powerful man on Earth making fun of some of the least powerful people in America.
By comparison, this was in private, and he’s just the White House Chief of Staff. So my reaction is more like “meh.”
But on a deeper point, do you want such people deciding matters as serious as your healthcare? It reminds me of the comment back when Limbaugh was hospitalized and predictably liberals were out in force wishing for his death: “The people calling for Rush Limbaugh to die are the same people who ask to control your healthcare.”
* Yes, I said “fucking” to my mother. And my mom is not the kind to be shocked by a sprinkling of curse words.
Update: Meanwhile the Department of Justice is looking for mentally retarded lawyers. Really? Well, probably not really, but they did say it.
