Carve your name in ice and wind

I hope nobody tuned in here for an April Foold Joke.....The Greatest Joke of our lifteime is playing out in D.C. before our eyes..........and as the taliban chief treatened an "amazing attack" on us soil , we bury that story and tackle the real problems like funding overseas abortion, apparing on late nite tv and socializing the country........this lil blip appeared in the sunday Post by our good friend Phil.

As a registered Democrat since the age of 18 and a newspaperman since I was 20, I never wanted to believe, as I suspected, that the news media for the most part leans hard left.

I used to figure that, if people felt the media leans too far to the left, it was only because the media were usually in the habit of getting things right.

But what we identify as "the mainstream news media" are so often inclined to tip so far to portside that looking straight ahead can mean looking sideways.

President Obama two weeks ago made a horrifying gaffe. While appearing with Jay Leno on NBC's "Tonight Show," he spoke what was once indelicately and insensitively known as "a retard joke."

Worse, he seemed so eager to compare his bowling acumen with that of a "Special Olympian" he actually waited for the audience to settle a bit from his previous remark before making the comment. It therefore wasn't "a slip." Clearly, he considered his quip to be both hip and clever, a crack he wanted to be heard cracking.

The President very clearly didn't understand his crack for what it is by modern standards: Cruel, cheap and, for only the best of reasons, antiquated.

And while an issue was briefly made of the issue, Obama was quickly and widely excused. He'd committed an "oopsie," and nothing worse.

Imagine, though, if George Bush II had said the same. Good gosh, he'd have been bashed for first-degree insensitivity; his remark would have stood as clear evidence of a man insulated from the world by wealth and privilege, sorrowfully and even frighteningly detached from real life, not to mention the progressive and caring ideals that those on the right seem least able to grasp.

The beating Bush would have been handed, from editorial cartoonists to David Letterman, would have been merciless -- and in large part deserved.

But even President Obama's apology badly missed the mark and the point. He apologized to the Special Olympics as if he'd made a naughty crack about a club instead of an entire population of unfortunates and their loved ones who never thought that in 2009 the President of the United States would be capable of making a "retard joke" on national TV.

Obama's apology wasn't merely inadequate; it again served to prove that he wasn't fully aware of why his "clever" remark -- the one he couldn't wait to crack -- was so hurtful.

But by then, the news media were pretty much done with the issue; no harm, no foul. And the entertainment industry -- the daily and nightly presenters of monologues -- didn't go near it. Unlike the last President, this one was excused.