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
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For our political geniuses: SwM, Blouise, et al.
“Obama’s current 21-percent-deficit — he trails Romney 59 to 38 percent — would be far harder to overcome, as this year may break a string of increasingly non-white electorates. In 2008, whites made up a record-low 74 percent of all voters; in the latest Post-ABC poll, they made up a similar 75 percent of likely 2012 voters.”
My question why has Obama lost more white votes this time than last time (about double)????
ElaineM,
Much water, I hope, has passed under the bridge since I uttered the word “pitiful” on you. Why don’t you give the full quote and context so we may discuss it now and resolve it in an amenable fashion.
Nursing barbs to your heart is seldom a way to remove them.
I mean simply that in my view, we fall here all too often, for reasons that I have given, prey to the need to denigrate our neighbors, our fellow workers, citizens, and world inhabitants. I have not proposed anything more than that we reflect upon this, preferably before we so eagerly hop on the latest bandwagon published here as a blog of denigration of someone.
Shared humanity. Yes, pity applies to us all. And if I did then it was likely in my early career here, when I struck out at many moving topics. But apoligies will not be rendered in a meaningful way without review of the whole context. So will hold that in abeyance.
I am not attacking you ElaineM. I questioned asking for a clarification of how you claim that Enoch was defending Ann Coulter. There is no attack there.
Elaine – The comment referred (dare I say it?) to a principle. If you are guilty of no transgressions (I’d like to meet such a person if any such exist), I could not have been speaking about you. If you are guilty of any transgressions, you would know it, it would be your duty to improve yourself in the recollection of them and none of the above are any of my business – except to hope that this describes your general mode of living. It’s how society improves itself: one person at a time, being honest about their own shortcomings and working to improve them.
Which brings me to your other question, “how…does one ‘improve’ one’s transgressions?” They don’t. Those transgressions, subject to the principle recently enunciated, improve the one.
Old Nurse,
Our silence would be useless. Just as silence is in combatting other ills in our land.
She has attained her fame without our attention. Now we hope to quench it by our attention. Who knows a ground swell made an effetive end to a famed BS-er just this last year.
idealist,
None of us is without fault. Are you suggesting that no one should criticize another person unless he/she confesses to his/her sins/transgressions first? You’ve criticized me in the past. As I recall on one occasion you even called me pitiful. Is that an example of your “shared humanity?”
PS They are also a form of reductio ad absurdum when considering the multifacets of reality and life.
To give an example from each of your bodies.
I was considering what questions I would like to put to the researcher I mentioned elsewhere about genetics and cancer.
Consider that you have 10 trillion cells in your body. Consider that they reproduce by division by at least 25 times. This gives at least 250 trillion opportunities to produce a cancer cell. Now to find this needle in a haystacks origin to being different in the relatively few genes we each have, is no small problem. (We have fewer genes than a plum tree!)
One which philsophy or advanced logics provides little help.
Everyone could solve the Coulter problem if they just simply ignore her. Don’t post or re-post her stuff. Don’t respond to these posts here. Do you think JT would keep posting stuff on her if nobody responded. No, I don’t think he would .
We are feeding her venom by responding, reacting, over-reacting, our outrage, blah, blah, blah. STOP FEEDING HER BY YOUR ATTENTION TO HER MALICE AND VENOM. STOP IT!!!
ElaineM,
A reasonable point of view. But I will still cling to the POV that when we criticize others, then we must consider our own failings as persons or societies.
Enoch, he goes that way admitted just above for reasons of principle. I do it for reasons of our shared humanity.
He was not defending Ann Coulter, any proof otherwise?!
He was calling attention to our not putting all of us under the microscope. Which I again criticise for not being realistic. Do I support him? Not at all.
In general to all, I do not feel that principles take
over from the demands of reality, which Enoch does.
Philosophy and principles in my mind have been used as rules of thumb, excuses to cover the lack of our understanding our world, and expecially our mind.
They were and are solely a map, one of many of reality as we can conceive of it.
Off Topic:
Romney rejected new birth certificates for gay parents
As governor, he ordered review for each child
By Murray Waas | Globe Correspondent
October 25, 2012
http://bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2012/10/24/mitt-romney-overruled-state-agency-and-rejected-new-birth-certificates-for-children-born-gay-parents/TqOHBb99V98H6nGQqUQrjO/story.html
Excerpt:
It seemed like a minor adjustment. To comply with the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that legalized gay marriage in 2003, the state Registry of Vital Records and Statistics said it needed to revise its birth certificate forms for babies born to same-sex couples. The box for “father” would be relabeled “father or second parent,’’ reflecting the new law.
But to then-Governor Mitt Romney, who opposed child-rearing by gay couples, the proposal symbolized unacceptable changes in traditional family structures.
He rejected the Registry of Vital Records plan and insisted that his top legal staff individually review the circumstances of every birth to same-sex parents. Only after winning approval from Romney’s lawyers could hospital officials and town clerks across the state be permitted to cross out by hand the word “father’’ on individual birth certificates, and then write in “second parent,’’ in ink.
Divisions between the governor’s office and state bureaucrats over the language on the forms and details about the extraordinary effort by the Republican governor to prevent routine recording of births to gay parents are contained in state records obtained by the Globe this month.
Deliberations about the policies, including dozens of exchanges about the marriages and births of individual families, are recounted in e-mails and legal memos sent between the governor’s office and lawyers at the Department of Public Health, which oversees the Registry of Vital Records.
The practice of requiring high-level legal review continued for the rest of Romney’s term, despite a warning from a Department of Public Health lawyer who said such a system placed the children of same-sex parents at an unfair disadvantage.
Thanks Elaine, shared
enochwisner,
What are my transgressions? And how, pray tell, does one “improve” one’s transgressions?
You claim to have principles? Is one of your principles standing in judgment of those who dare criticize the likes of Ann Coulter? Why not look for a more upstanding individual to come to the defense of?
Malisha and Elaine –
Not being as bad as someone is a question of degree. That Coulter is is a public figure may exacerbate her transgressions, but it does not improve our own. Idealist takes exception with me because I continually return to principles, rather than deal with realities. I cannot apologize for his very accurate observation: I believe that principle is far more important even than life itself. Imagine how much mankind would not have achieved if not for others before us who did not believe very much the same.
“I taught in the Vien Yeshivah in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, though, and lived in an apartment in the house of the Pupa Rebbe on Keap Street there. My son’s maternal family are Lubavitch hasidim, going back to the times of the Ba’al haTanya.”
Enoch,
I grew up in a large Orthodox family on both maternal and paternal sides. Much of my Mother’s family lived in Borough Park, though they are now dead. I was the NYC OCS liaison to the Lubavitcher Community in Crown Heights in the early 70’s. Went to Shul on shabbos at 770 Eastern Parkway and met “The Rebbe”. This summer I played softball with Lubavitchers in the Catskills. I also live in the fastest growing Jewish community in the U.S. You can play all the “Jewish Geography” you want with me, but it doesn’t work. The difference might well be that I also know Jews perhaps much less “frum” than yourself and so have a wider perspective.
Obama’s ‘bullshitter’ remark could signal campaign plan to target Romney
Obama campaign spokesman warns people not to be ‘distracted by the word’ but says language raises issues of trust
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/us-news-blog/2012/oct/25/barack-obama-bullshitter-romney?newsfeed=true
Excerpt;
An off-hand and off-colour remark by Barack Obama may have signalled a decision by his campaign to go nuclear on Mitt Romney’s shifting ideological track record.
In an interview with Rolling Stone, conducted by celebrated presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, Obama labelled Romney a “bullshitter” – and rather than backing away from the comment, a senior Obama campaign adviser said it raised “trust” issues with Romney’s candidacy.
Brinkley’s interview recorded a conversation between Obama and Eric Bates, the executive editor of Rolling Stone. Bates told Obama that his six-year-old daughter had a message for the president: “Tell him: you can do it.” Obama replied with a grin:
You know, kids have good instincts. They look at the other guy and say, ‘Well, that’s a bullshitter, I can tell’.
Asked to explain Obama’s remark, spokesman Dan Pfeiffer told reporters that he hadn’t seen the article, but went on to say: “Trust is a very important part of the election. The president is someone who says what he means and does what he says, and Governor Romney’s answers in the debates on domestic issues and foreign policy raise real questions about that.”
Mike – I’m sorry if my comment re. Jewish scoffing at the likes of Coulter offended you. I taught in the Vien Yeshivah in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, though, and lived in an apartment in the house of the Pupa Rebbe on Keap Street there. My son’s maternal family are Lubavitch hasidim, going back to the times of the Ba’al haTanya. My history is somewhat complex, and irrelevant to discuss here; but, I promise you, I have at least not less foundation for my comment as you may have for yours. If you are right in your Jewish milieu, please accept the possibility that my exposure to Jews, Judaism and prevailing attitudes is at least not less considerable, and my comments therefore, possibly, just as accurate as yours.
A woman who dated Dinesh D’ Souza, the devout married Christian with a daughter and who went to the Christian family values conference to share his Christian values with his fiancee who is also married to another man and lied their about his adultery knows everything about what retard means.
Women are accepted in this society as celebrities, stars,etc. As honest achievers in matters of substance—-seldom.
She is probably developing a cure for cancer on the side as a secret avocation. A replacement for Palin she is not.
and repubs want it to stay that way for honest acheivers, if women, equal pay is no good for them – keep em poor, pregnant and at home waiting to serve their man dinner “If” (as Romney said in debate “they have to work),
Blouise, Obama has a little tick up in the polls going on so they are out in force today. Trump’s announcement was such a big disappointment for them.
For a woman who did so well during her educational years, I am somewhat surprised that she chose a career that requires so little effort. Perhaps this was the surest path to the spotlight she could find.
Bron,
Your view ( 😉 ) may be the correct one, ie T-bagger, topbagger, etc.
Anybody here seen the Mapplethorpe exhibition? It was
here at the Fotgraphic Museum for 3 months. Indirect introduction to Patti Smith’s book on the two of them.
Wish it had been a permanent one, as it like so many things serve effectively as a litmus paper of your development as a person.
enochwisner
How dare you compare anyone here to the low life, Ann Coulter. No one with a brain has to bear that kind of comparison. Teabaggers are not equals of anyone on this board regarding intelligence and thoughful (versus her overtly hateful) commentaries . Is that clear enough? And with the exception of our host, no one on this board is given free air time. Coulter uses hers to spew teabagger nonsense and hate.
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My laundress today has a father, 45, full professor at Karolinska Institute on genetically caused cancer and a microbiologist. He’s going to leave research, and go over to teaching at junior college. Reason: “existential” (she called it that) problems from being so deep and no one understanding what you are saying or doing. Said to be common problem among researchers there. He feels communication with the young as being important to him. Funds for researching was replied with that Karolinska had oodles.