Obama’s Special Olympics comment

I don’t want to drag politics into this blog – but I do want to comment on what President Obama apparently said last night on Leno. For those of you who haven’t heard, read this bit from a USAToday blog:

As we reported last night, Obama and Leno were joking about the president’s bowling ability. Obama said he’s been practicing and recently had a score of 129. That’s not too high, and the president said that it was “like Special Olympics or something.”

As a quick disclaimer, I want to point out that this is not a politically motivated post – I don’t hate President Obama and that’s not why I chose to post this. And I don’t even want to bother writing about the obvious reasons why this comment was out of line. Instead, I want to pick at what in my experience seems like an inaccuracy: specifically, Obama’s generalization that Special Olympians are bad bowlers. (I’d submit that non-Special Olympians as a whole are no better.) A few years back, I volunteered for a Special Olympics bowling tournament in Milwaukee. I was volunteering at one lane in particular where a female athlete bowled a 259…yes, a 259. In her second game, she bowled another 200-something game. She was dialed in, had great form and she was flat-out talented. To this day, that is the highest score I’ve seen someone bowl live. But importantly, her quality scores weren’t the only high scores at the tournament (I’m not even sure she won.) There were a fair number of other athletes with scores over 200.

Again, not a political comment here, I guess I just wanted to share that I’ve had a life experience that made me doubly question Obama’s comment.

Green Bay Packers, Bad Luck?

To paraphrase the old country song, Rudy Giuliani might as well take bad luck because it’s better than no luck at all. At a campaign stop in Florida yesterday, the state where the former New York City mayor is betting his candidacy on a win, Giuliani refused to sign a Green Bay Packer hat given to him by a Packer fan.

Watch the video here.

Memo to Rudy: You already said you would support the Boston Red Sox after your New York Yankees were eliminated, something akin to cheering for Lucifer if you are a Yankee fan. Now, you’re offered a Packer hat to sign and you refuse? In Florida? The Packers are America’s team. If you were to somehow win Florida — less likely now that you may have lost that vote — showing your support for the Packers could have given you a huge boost heading into the February 5, 22-state primary. (It’s entirely possible the Packers will have gotten beaten decisively in the Super Bowl two days earlier, thus driving up the sympathy vote.)

If I’m you, at this point I start campaigning in a Cheesehead to start making amends. It’s your only shot.