Mark your calendar! I defend Obama.

Mark it on your calendar – today I defend Obama!

A few days back Obama went on Leno – causing my wife to remark, “What’s the president of the United States doing on Leno?”

Understand, she loves Leno, but not being American she has certain assumptions about the dignity of the office, but never mind.

Anyhow, after the usual political verbiage with intellectual content as close to zero as doesn’t matter, Obama made a self-deprecating joke about his bowling prowess, “it’s like – like Special Olympics or something.”

The audience laughed. The PC lobby was not amused, and surprisingly did not excuse one of their own this time.

Once given permission, Republicans jumped on him too.

Mark Steyn said, “He might be “a fairly sensitive and compassionate man,” (in the words of a defender.) Alternatively, he could be a mean, self-absorbed S.O.B. who regards anyone other than himself as intellectually disabled.”

“I was shocked to learn of the comment made by President Obama about Special Olympics,” Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, mother of a child with Down’s Syndrome, said. “This was a degrading remark about our world’s most precious and unique people, coming from the most powerful position in the world.”

After the show, Obama phoned Tim Shriver, chairman of the Special Olympics, to apologize.

Shriver later said the president expressed regret “in a way that I think was very moving.”

However, the foster-mother of Kolan McConiughey, a Special Olympics athlete from Ann Arbor, Mich., was not the least bit offended

McConiughey has an IQ somewhere around the 50s. He never learned to read or figure, but holds down a job just fine thank you, and evidently shows signs of savantism.

Idiot savant is a French term, pronounced “ee-dee-oh sah-vaunt.” It describes the phenomenon of people who appear to be of sub-normal intelligence or autistic, who display remarkable talents of memory, calculation, or sometimes music.*

McConiughey’s talent it appears, is bowling. He bowls an average score of 266 and has bowled three perfect games.

And now he wants to take on the president, according to the TMZ Web site.

Now here’s my suggestion:

You critics, need to LIGHTEN THE FRACK UP!

Don’t feed the PC beast!

Mr. President, FOR GOD’S SAKE GROW A PAIR AND QUIT APOLOGIZING!

And if you want to do something for Special Olympics athletes, and show you’re a good sport – take Mr. McConiughey’s challenge and let us watch him wax your ass at bowling.

* The most famous movie depiction of savantism, was of course, “Rain Man” with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman.

The question of why these talents don’t appear more often among people of more normal or high intelligence is an interesting one. Or perhaps they do – some have suggested more socially adept people quickly learn to hide such talents.

On that note, my grandmother had the “play by ear” talent. When her older sister finished pracitising her piano lessons, my grandmother could sit at the piano and repeat everything she’d heard – before she’d ever had lessons herself.

My great-aunt told me how mad it used to make her.

Perhaps such talents just aren’t very useful or are even, dare we say, handicapping.

People with perfect pitch or the play-by-ear talent rarely, if ever, become great musicians. I’ve heard perfect pitch can make listening to an orchestra an excruciating experience.

People with phenomenal natural memories often have problems with attention and focus – as I can attest.

Lightning calculators – how handy is that in normal life?