I Thought Retarded People Were Supposed to be Nice
By: Noreen Heartfield

Boy, the more I watch what this President of our's is up to, the more incredulous I become. Its astounding - I thought retarded people were supposed to be nice! I mean, who's ever heard of an evil retard? Not me, that's for sure.

Granted, until recently I've never been what you'd call a very politically conscious person - I've never gone out of my way to keep abreast of issues pertaining to foreign and domestic policy; rather, I've tended to trust my gut instinct when it's come to deciding which politicians to support. The way they talk, facial expressions, whether there are any sexual peccadilloes in their past - these are the characteristics which have served me, and until now served me well, as my criteria for judging who to vote for. But with this Bush fellow, I feel betrayed. After all, he's retarded, so although I knew he wouldn't be the most brilliant or polished President in our history, I figured he'd at least err on the side of compassion. Boy was I wrong.

I used to volunteer for an assisted living center for the mentally handicapped, and I can say for sure that none of the residents there, not a one, would have promoted CAFTA - a "free trade" agreement that will subordinate democratically established regulations on commerce, labor and the environment in this country and Central America to the interests of corporations so a few rich people can get richer by transforming decent paying American jobs into slave labor abroad and getting a free pass on pollution. Besides not fitting the nice nature of the average retarded individual, it would also conflict with their own self interest as all those Americans with normal intelligence who get laid off will be forced to start competing with them for their jobs at Wal-Mart and Del Taco.

Would the nice Mexican boy with Cerebral Palsy who mows my lawn exploit the fear and patriotism of the citizens of this country to start a war with a weak Third World nation under fabricated pretenses? I sincerely doubt it, and even if he did, I'm positive he at least wouldn't go around exalting the sacrifice of our side's soldiers while sponsoring the use of napalm and munitions containing depleted uranium responsible for thousands of cases of strange cancers and auto-immune disorders amongst veterans returning from over there. I mean, we're talking about a kid who I saw dropping Fritos down a gopher hole last week here. Why couldn't our President drop fresh tasty corn chips over Iraq instead of bombs? That's the sort of thing I'd expect from a person of his intellectual capacity, which is why I voted for him twice in the first place.

Remember that mentally disabled kid Corky from that old show "Life Goes On?" Delightful show. Whatever happened to him? I thought he had real star potential. Anyway, do you think he'd force little old ladies like me to go to dangerous urban neighborhoods to get the pot they need to alleviate the pain from their bone cancer by sigining a law striking down state provisions for the medical use of marijauna? Hell no! Not Corky!

But perhaps I'm being too harsh. After all, I suspect his behavior is in large part a product of those characters he hangs out with - that Cheney fellow and that lumpy white guy who wears the big floppy chef's hat and sells cookie dough on TV - Karl Rove. The mentally impaired can be highly impressionable, and these guys are definitely bad news. Somebody should do something.