“What I Hated the Most”

 I do want this to be the very last Word! dealing with the former occupant of the White House, but I’m not making any promises. Watching the inspirational inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris I was moved by what I saw and what I heard. At a slow point in the proceedings, I started to wonder, “What, of hundreds of possibilities, did I hate most about Biden’s predecessor?” And I truly hate the man. It could be the lies; It could be calling John McCain a “loser”; it could be his policies; it could be his narcissism; it could be the role he played in the January 6th tragedy…and I do…. all of them! And more.

  What I hate the most – and this to me is a true reflection on his character – is how he mocked a journalist with a disability in his first campaign, making fun of his appearance, his difficulty speaking and his memory. To me, that’s as low as a person can get, an insult to one of God’s creations, a public moment in which he made fun of another human being.

  Good friends of ours have a daughter who has Down Syndrome, and she happens to be our goddaughter. At one point she was the only one of the four sisters to be employed. She is sweet and kind, sensitive and loving. And of course, across her forty-plus years she has had her share of people making fun, calling her “retarded,” and the like. 

   It’s sad when people stoop to comment so hurtfully against another, but when the president does it, doesn’t it give permission to others? The same can be said about so many of his words and their impact.

   One of the triplets produced a documentary called The R Word. Dr. Beth Haller, author of Representing Disability in an Ableist World, wrote this about the film, “(It) interrogates a slur connected to intellectual disability that is still, sadly, in common usage in North America. With this nuanced look at the word, it shows American culture how to let go of this unnecessary word…This is also a film about the power of families, especially siblings, to lead the charge to change society…”

  I think you can find it on YouTube.

  At this point I thought of other reasons to hate the guy, but I’ll leave it alone now.