March 20, 2009, 1:08 pm
Obama Apologizes for Off-Key Quip
By David Stout
President Obama has apologized for his quip on “The Tonight Show” on NBC Thursday comparing his modest bowling skills to those of athletes who have disabilities.
Chatting with Jay Leno, the president said he had been practicing at
the White House bowling alley and rolled a 129. “It was like the
Special Olympics or something,” Mr. Obama said, perhaps also recalling
his inept attempt at bowling in Altoona, Pa., during the presidential
campaign.
The president called the chairman of the Special Olympics, Tim
Shriver, from Air Force One on his way back to Washington. “He
apologized in a way I think was very moving,” Mr. Shriver said on ABC’s “Good Morning America” on Friday. Mr. Shriver said the president sounded “very sincere” in voicing his desire not to add to anyone’s pain.
“Words hurt, words do matter,” added Mr. Shriver, son of the Special
Olympics’ founder, Eunice Kennedy Shriver, a sister of President John
F. Kennedy, and R. Sargent Shriver, the first director of the Peace
Corps.
The White House clearly recognized the presidential slip at once,
since Mr. Obama called Mr. Shriver even before the taped interview was
broadcast. “The President made an offhand remark making fun of his own
bowling that was in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics,”
the deputy press secretary, Bill Burton, told reporters on Air Force
One. “He thinks that the Special Olympics are a wonderful program that
gives an opportunity to shine to people with disabilities from around
the world.”
Let me begin by saying that I really do have a sense of humor about the truly funny aspects of my son's disabilities. He has a wicked sense of humor himself, and some of his attempts to navigate the world on his own terms are unintentionally hilarious. We often find ourselves doubled over with laughter at the things he does in situations that people outside of our family might find puzzling or even offensive. I thought The Ringer was hilarious, and I thought there was so much brilliant comedy in Tropic Thunder that I was willing to overlook the fact that Ben Stiller's (to me) mildly offensive portrayal of cognitive disability simply wasn't funny.
But President Obama's comment that his less-than-stellar bowling skills are appropriate for Special Olympics really troubles me. I've commented before about the compelling lesson about true dignity with respect to body image that Special Olympics athletes could teach us all. I think President Obama might be well-served to consider what he might learn from these athletes about true dignity with respect to athletic prowess. President Obama is clearly a man who takes great pride in his athletic ability. He must have been embarrassed during last year's campaign at being shown to be less than accomplished at bowling. But to think it appropriate to attempt to address that personal humiliation with an insensitive "joke" like this, as President of the United States, on a late-night talk show, suggests a fundamental lack of respect for people with disabilities.
I realize that people with disabilities do not represent a large segment of the voting public. Among all of the protected classes in our large panoply of civil rights laws, they are the most vulnerable, along dozens of fronts -- in the battle for resources, for the right to be born, and for the acceptance of their equal dignity as human beings. Remarks like Obama's (and Al Gore's "extra-chromosome crowd" joke) would never be tolerated if they were made at the expense of women or racial minorities. An apology and the inevitable photo-ops that I'm sure are going to follow of Obama bowling at the White House with a group of Special Olympians would not be enough to address the suspicions raised by the remark if it had been made about any other protected class. The fact that these sorts of remarks are publicly voiced by presidents and presidential candidates demonstrates the shallowness of the commitment our liberal society really has to the equal dignity of people with disabilities.
Ironically, my son went on a field trip yesterday that he had been looking forward to for a long time. He went bowling with his entire special education class. He had a wonderful time. Though I wasn't there, I'm certain he, his classmates, and all his teachers laughed almost the whole time.
(By the way, tomorrow is World Down Syndrome Day. Celebrate!!!)
Our Sunday Visitor's March 29th editorial ends with this:
While the debate about the definition and value of torture will continue, the Church's teachings in this area are clear and consistent: The ends do not justify the means. Torture is an affront to human dignity and has been labeled by the U.S. bishops as an "intrinsically evil action" in their 2007 document "Forming Consciences for Faithful Citizenship," along with abortion, the destruction of human embryos, genocide, racism and targeting noncombatants.
All of these actions deny the immutable dignity of human life, and all are condemned. Pope Benedict XVI himself said in 2007 that "means of punishment or correction that either undermine or debase the human dignity of prisoners" must be avoided. "The prohibition against torture cannot be contravened under any circumstances."
That the ends justify the means -- be it for abortion, euthanasia or embryonic stem cell research -- has become the rationalization of choice for a host of questionable actions that our society now approves. Torture certainly fits within those categories.
What we surrender when we make such accommodations with evil, however, goes much further than simply the moral diminishment of our country and its ideals. By using legal legerdemain to justify the unjustifiable, we give cover to more despotic nations and weaken the internal restraints that keep our own society from resorting to more debased actions.
As with abortion, by appearing to tolerate and even justify an evil such as torture, Americans hasten the erosion of the moral values upon which all civilized society must be based.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Over at
Vox Nova, Mornings Minion comments on an exchange between
Michael Kinsley and
Ross Douthat on embryo destructive research. MM says (incorrectly I think) that Douthat doesn’t really answer Kinsley’s charge that opponents of embryo destructive research are being inconsistent when they are “content to leave the IVF clinic more or less alone, even if they might personally disagree with the act.”
I believe, as MM suggests, that some of the reluctance to impose restrictions on IVF can be accounted for by middle class support for the procedure as a legitimate form of assisted reproduction. But this is only part of the story. The absence of efforts to restrict IVF also represents (1) a calculation that such measures would be politically unfeasible such that any attempt to enact them would harm efforts to restrict embryo destructive research and (2) any restrictions, if enacted, would likely be subject to a successful constitutional challenge under the legal regime created by Roe and its progeny. Thus, while this reluctance to legally limit IVF is not, as MM points out, wholly consistent, it may well reflect a sober recognition of the futility of such measures. In any case, it embodies a prudential judgment, and those who exercise prudence are always subject to the charge of inconsistency, especially when the wisdom of their judgment is still in doubt.
Perhaps as a middle course to outright prohibition of IVF (which would surely face overwhelming opposition in the current context), those of us who oppose embryo destructive research should propose limits on the number of embryos that can be produced in the course of a couple's treatment for infertility and (more ambitiously) that a maximum of two or three embryos be produced during a given treatment and that all of them be implanted. In the wake of the outcry over the “Octomom,” there may well be widespread public support for such efforts – efforts that, nevertheless, would still be subject to constitutional challenge. Surely this would not constitute a complete response to the problems presented by the creation of nascent human life outside the womb, but it would be a first step in helping to build a culture of life.
U.S. News and World report has a fascinating five part email debate between Professors Doug Kmiec and Robert George on President Obama's position on human cloning. Read it here.
In a powerful and beautiful 35 minute documentary from Uganda, Rose, Vicky, and other women infected with the AIDS virus have found hope and joy in their lives. These women have much to teach us (at least me) about living, loving, and serving others both near and far.
With respect to the question of AIDS and condoms, which Rob raises here, their hope and joy clearly don't come from increased condom distribution, which they view as a perpetuation of the common mentality that fostered the spread of the disease in the first place.
Rob writes: "Did Pope Benedict mean that the distribution of condoms will send a message of support for sexual promiscuity, thereby decreasing current levels of abstinence and marital fidelity? If so, does that match up with the facts on the ground in Africa?" An NCR (no not that NCR!) blog post suggests a "yes" answer:
Last year, the Register spoke with secular experts who said that, in many places, condom promotion actually increases AIDS.
We explained, in Grace Candiru’s recent story about Uganda:
Edward Green is director of the AIDS Prevention Research Project at the Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies. He wrote Rethinking AIDS Prevention: Learning From Successes in Developing Countries and reported that, between 1989 and 2001, the average number of condoms per male ages 15 to 49 in African countries skyrocketed. So did the number of those infected with HIV. South Africa, Botswana and Zimbabwe had the world’s highest levels of condom availability per man. They also had the world’s highest HIV rates.
Norman Hearst is a family physician and epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco.
UNAIDS, the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS, asked Hearst to do a scientific review to see if condom promotions had reversed HIV/AIDS epidemics. His review found the contrary was true. Countries with the most condoms per man tended to have the highest HIV rates. UNAIDS refused to publish Hearst’s findings.
“Condom promotion in Africa has been a disaster,” Hearst said.
Nearly every country on the continent has vigorously promoted condoms to stem the tide of the AIDS epidemic there. But the epidemic has only grown larger.
Uganda, on the other hand, has experienced the greatest decline in HIV prevalence of any country in the world, according to the Heritage Foundation. The Ugandan public education campaign against AIDS mentioned condoms, but emphasized abstinence.
Studies show that from 1991 to 2001 HIV infection rates in Uganda declined from about 15% to 5%.
“The Ugandan model has the most to teach the rest of the world,” said Green. “This policy should guide the development of programs in Africa and the Caribbean.”
Maybe, just maybe, the Pope is on to something.
