No Laughing Matter

President Obama firsts chose a comedian's venue to win support for his economic policy, then closed with a joke comparing his bowling abilities to the Special Olympics.  And what's the punch line?

The current economic crisis isn't funny.  The lack of leadership at all levels, particularly by the President, isn't funny.  The choice of a Change Team riddled with members who "forgot" to pay income taxes isn't funny.  The extravagant fraud and waste of our present and future economic resources being thrown into the fires of failing businesses supposedly critical to our survival isn't funny.

So why does our first African-American President, the Bringer of Change,  find it fitting to play the economy for laughs on late-night television?  Why stoop to playing the Special Olympics card for a few cheap laughs?  Does his office or his promises for change in the way government is run allow him to marginalize the seriousness of the crisis engulfing us?  Does his racial heritage somehow allow him to make jokes at the expense of others he obviously sees as, let's charitably allow, less athletic than the mainstream? 

Spare me the protests of "he didn't mean what he said; he apologized; he mis-spoke."  The words are out there.  The grin on the face as he said them speak more eloquently than any post-broadcast denials.  We don't need to be told what he meant, or what's in his heart.  It was evident.

President Obama took his message of economic recovery to the people.  The people who aren't receiving million-dollar bonuses.  He talked down to the people from the bully pulpit of a comedian's stage, and he went for the cheapest of laughs aimed at what he must have perceived to be the lowest common denominator among those he claims to represent:  bigotry.

I'm not laughing.