THE DAILY GRIND: Heeeere's Barry!

Barrack Obama comes as advertised. He's smart, cool and attractive. He's even hip. Or, at least, as hip as any 47-year-old man can be. Although, for such an excellent speaker, he sounds surprisingly strained when he starts dropping "G's" and affecting a "just plain folks" accent.

But the first question about the Leno appearance that needs answering, is whether it was a good idea for a sitting President of the United States to appear on late-night talk show at all. It did feel a little strange; a little too informal. But, so what? FDR did his fireside chats. That must have seemed strange at the time.

Then again, the problem with being informal is that you might make an informal remark and really piss people off. That would be the instantly infamous crack about his bowling and the Special Olympics. Truly, how foolish can one man be? Everybody knows bowling isn't an Olympic sport. Kidding.

Not to rain on the faux-outrage parade, but who gives a shit if he says he looked retarded? Kids with special needs tend to lack grace. They aren't the world's best athletes. That's not a secret or anything. Have we really grown this humorless as a nation?

Now, anyone with a shred of intellectual honesty has to admit that President Bush would have been utterly lambasted for the same joke. Slaughtered. Just imagine W. chuckling that he bowled like a retard. Fire and brimstone would have rained from the sky; i.e. the New York Times and Washington Post ediortial boards.

But what some liberals did to Bush was ugly. Wearing t-shirts that called the President of the United States a moron? What about that one that said,"Somewhere in Texas a village is missing an idiot." There's one slogan, "He's not my president" that's just plain unpatriotic. If you are an American citizen, if you believe in the Constitution, then the sitting President of the United States is always "your" president, no matter who is he is.

Here's hoping that conservatives will resist the urge to do Obama what liberals did to Bush. Yeah right. That'll happen. Who wants to bet how long it takes before the first "My President is Special" bumper stickers appear?