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.
