White House Adviser Rahm "Rahmbo" Emmanuel Apologizes For Calling Liberals "Retarded"—But Not to Liberals
When liberal Democrats threatened to run ads against moderates party members who were holding out on health care reform, nine-fingered senior Obama adviser and noted sender-of-threatening-dead-fishes Rahm Emmanuel reportedly responded with two words: "Fucking" and "retarded."
On the strategy's merits, Emmanuel, who's known as the White House's resident arm-twister was almost certainly right: Democrats don't currently have the votes to pass health care reform; it's unlikely that stepping up the party infighting would bring those votes into existence. But as a matter of offense, there's a limit to what even a Hill head-knocker like Emmanual is allowed to be quoted saying in the Wall Street Journal. So he apologized… just not to the Democrats; instead, he apologized to the CEO of the Special Olympics, who's running a campaign against the use of the word "retard." Message received, sir: Calling liberals "retarded" is unfair to the disabled.