Below is a powerful response from a man with Down’s Syndrome to Ann Coulter who recently called President Barack Obama a “retard.” He is Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens. He is also the antidote to today’s hateful political discourse.
Dear Ann Coulter,
Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren’t dumb and you aren’t shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult?
I’m a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public’s perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.
I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.
Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.
Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.
Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.
After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.
I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.
Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.
No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.
Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
A friend you haven’t made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia
Tea is brown, bag is what we know it is. Hey, even someone who is not hep can (maybe) figure it out.
Gays who dig blacks?
the Tea bagger has, as I understand it, the upper hand so to speak.
Tricksy,
I have to echo OS’s request for some documentation of your wild claim. The President did not use the word that you referenced, but if you have the tape or the link to a reputable source, let’s see it.
It is probablly not right or fair to call someone an idiot anymore. Now take that guy out in Mizzoura running for the Senate who thinks that a woman who is raped can ward off pregnancy somehow by her indignation or whatever. In Mizzoura, and I know this for a fact, some folks call him an idjit. Now, idjit is a slang term for idiot and is perhaps fair and balanced. But either word is a bit rough on those folks out there who were not born with a full mental deck. Same with “retard”. We need a kinder, gentler, word for the idjits of the world. Coulter is a “friggin Akin”. In this instance, she “pulled an Akin”.
Gene H. :
“Tea baggers was their original choice of nomenclature until someone explained it to them.”
Which is exactly why I continue to use it, and so should others. It was their choice of word, and it’s highly embarrassing to them. There’s no reason to stop using it, especially considering their ignorance and gay-hating views.
I forgot and left out Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Do vice presidents count? Say, like Dick Cheney’s famous advice to Sen. Patrick Leahy–on the Senate floor no less.
Tricksy:
Re teabaggers. That is a term that has come into common usage as a reference to the Tea Party subset of the GOP. Not very flattering, but I have several even more colorful terms for them.
As for the President calling Mitt a BS creator, it is correct that he has said Mitt has made untruthful and inconsistent statements, but I do not believe he used the word you claimed. I don’t think it happened the way you claimed. Linkee thingee please? Since practically every public utterance of the Prez is on YouTube, that should not be hard for you if true.
The Prez is not anywhere in the league of Coulter, Hannity, O’Reilley and company when it comes to stoking hatred.
On the other hand, I am sure that a former community organizer has learned a colorful vocabulary, but he would have to work at it to come up to the standards of Presidents Andrew Jackson, U.S.Grant, Teddy Roosevelt or Harry Truman.
Tea baggers was their original choice of nomenclature until someone explained it to them. That they grew to regret it is their problem. That many think it is simply apropos of their extremist and ignorance fueled political pronouncements is another issue.
MikeS,
Yesterday I found a simile to describe my once too constant approach to sex, and I suspect that of many others’ liasons too.
It is simply eating the icing before sampling the cake.
Not really knowing emotionally the other person, then
intercouse is a heightened form of mutual masturbation.
That women are also so compelled makes it no better.
But we do eat at McD occasionally, slack our thirsts, read a poor book at the beach, etc. But all the time looking for a quick lay, as I often did, which time could have been spent looking for a better one is time wasted, and experiences left unachieved—–and of what magnitude we are left to guess.
unfortunately Ann Coulter is not alone in vulgar choice of words. I heard my President use the term ‘tea baggers’ when referencing members of the tea party and label his opponent Mitt a bull shi**er. Then there is Reverend Wright, Sean Hannity, etc who make a living with hate speech. People may choose words as they wish, and we have the right and perhaps obligation to call them to task and hold them accountable.
“I heard my President use the term ‘tea baggers’ when referencing members of the tea party and label his opponent Mitt a bull shi**er.”
Tricksy,
Can you supply me with links to the fact the the President used those exact words in that context?
Jonathan Alter interview for his book:
http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/politics/2010/05/president-obama-gop-opposition-to-stimulus-helped-to-create-the-teabaggers/
Geeba Geeba,
I could be wrong, but I feel that you missed the point with Coulter’s and other repug’s use of “retard”.
To me it is as “Ed” and the Professor said:
“retard” is code for dumb Nigxxx, ie the whole race group, and the whole of which who will support Obama, if “we” can’t disenfranchise/votedefraud(etc. It, referred to the President, confirms their first held positions from 2008 or earlier. He does not, can not and will not do as a President of our “white” country.
And it is use as a battlecry to the troops who understand the code word, and they are many otherwise they would not be using it right now so profusely.
Get the troops off the golfcourse/pools and to the polls.
Sincerely hope that helps.
Myself, I have never been so proud since JFK, and even he had faults, but mostly women ones, not Obama’s flora.
Genetically we are not races. We are not different species. We are like dogs (again), each different sizes, colors, etc. Race—-a stupid idea.
If Ann Coulter apologizes for her remarks about Obama, it will be for the exact same reason, and with the exact same sincerity that Rahm Emanuel did for his “f**king retard” remarks about liberals; that is, because of a cold, calculated assessment that she will gain more from the apology than loose by it.
Yes, Ann Coulter – eyes like windows into hell – is indeed the embodiment of social cancer, and it shows in every aspect of her from her sickly face to her emaciated body to her twisted malevolent thought process. She is utterly possessed by hatred and at this point owes her existence to it, financial and otherwise. But she is nothing more cynical or ruthless or hateful than Obama and his administration including Rahm Emanuel. She hasn’t, for instance, trashed the fifth amendment of our constitution for her own personal sense of “empire”, nor killed four year olds as collateral damage while keeping total secrecy regarding any possible justification for doing so, nor created “Disposition Matrices” in the “f**king cloud” to watch and record every man woman and child in this country under the assumption that in an Obama style democracy, every US citizen is a budding potential terrorist and can be eliminated from the pursuit of liberty, happiness and yes even life at the whim of the executive “commander in chief” not only in this administration but in others going forward that some here might not pay such fantastical homage to going forward..
My problem with her, and people like Trump, and others, is that they are losers but ‘win’ by all the rewards we call winning in the US.
Well done Geeba.
Elaine is right that Coulter has a right to say anything she wants, but her critics have the same right.
Wow, Coulter and her whole party were beaten by a lazy retard, even though they had more money to campaign with? How useless and stupid must they BE?
Coulter advertises the fact that she is ultimately a loser. And like losers who cannot face their own problems, she grabs at the solution of insulting others to try to feel superior to them. She’s what some call “cute” but my verdict is: She’s as intelligent and admirable as a box of rocks.
Elizabeth Campbell,
Thank you for your words.
And let me repeat Mr Stephen’s:
“No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.”
Of course, the idea strikes me. Loving life comes from overcoming, not from being favored.
leejcaroll,
Needed or not, you did a fine job.
Geeba Geeba,
“Prof Turley recently declared the “end of free speech”. So why the outrage over this?”
*****
Coulter exercised her First Amendment right of free speech when she made that comment about the President–and we are exercising our free speech rights to criticize her for it–and for all the other crass and outrageous remarks she has made in the past.
BTW, who has played the victim here in commenting on this post?
(not that anyone here needs my defending)
Geeba Geeba says: Prof Turley recently declared the “end of free speech”. So why the outrage over this?
Included in the right to free speech is the right to be outraged.
I notice recently that the people who blog here regularly have been called out as calling names, hurling insults, etc by some whose names you don;t (I don’t) see that often.
It is rare that the debates here, from my perspective at any rate, result in more then reasoned and intelligent debate, posting of videos to make thier points, etc. Read here irregularly and you may end up coming to an argument between some folks but given the whole of the engagement here that is a negligible occurence.