During the campaign for the White House in 2008, the media criticized Palin for being ‘common,’ ‘not-polished,’ ‘not-compassionate’ and ‘not presidential.’ However, compare Sarah Palins attitude in this video created three weeks ago for the Special Olympics in Boise, Idaho.

You decide the more ‘presidential’ among them:

http://tinyurl.com/ccz6nj

However, as a person with disabilities that uses a service dog, I don’t find this comment as anything more than a slip of the tongue by a person that does what to have a positive effect on the world he lives in, and is doing a fantastic job so far at positioning himself to do so.

I’ve always been taught that if you’re looking to be offended, you will be. I’m certain everyone here — disability or not — knows that it is unfortunately contemporary to use disabilities as insults.

If anyone does any research into the history of the words “Dumb” or even more modern and obvious “retard” they’ll find that these words were actually at one time official diagnosis for disabilities. These words are now used as insults.

You can either be raving mad that he is a product of his times and is trying his best to be as sensitive as he can to all 300 million American citizens, each with their own cause, or you can understand that the only perfect people are in religious beliefs, and adjust your expectations of President Obama accordingly.

However, as per the earlier comment, Obama’s comment can in no way compare to the chimp/stimulus bill cartoon….that was a direct implication of violence in addition to the race factor, and unless you know African American history, you really wouldn’t understand it.

Also, the organization that owns the NY Post, has a history of being blatantly racially insensitive. The difference is that President Obama immediately called to make an apology, and we know that he has the disability community community high on his agenda for change within his administration.

There are some incidences when a joke is just a joke and and a mistake is just a mistake, and ignorance is just ignorance. This was unfortunately for President Obama, all three, but I bet you he won’t ever forget it, nor should we let him. It will get what the community needs done that much faster.

Please don’t make matters worse by trying to justify Mr. Obama’s outrageously insensitive remark.

To answer your question, yes, I’ve made plenty of insensitive comments in my lifetime.

However, they weren’t made on national television.

And, I’m not the president of the United States.

Here is what I just sent:

Dear President Obama,

I have rarely been more proud and hopeful than while watching you include “those who are disabled” in your election-night speech. I have rarely smiled more broadly than while watching you fill out your March Madness bracket on ESPN. And I have rarely been more saddened than while reading of your comment to Jay Leno about the Special Olympics.

You know what stereotyping does. You can and must do better.

During the campaign, I took a public stance that you and Joe Biden would provide more meaningful help to people with disabilities and their families than McCain-Palin, despite their personal connections to the topic. Please prove me right. And if I can be of any help, please let me know.

I’m a mother of a 2.5 year old boy with DS and I still believe he’s the best shot we’ve got.