Dear Ann...
He touched my heart. 
After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a retard in a tweet during Monday night's presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens penned her this open letter:
Dear Ann Coulter,
Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren't dumb and you aren't shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? I'm a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public's perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night. I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have. Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next. Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift. Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more. After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV. I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash. Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor. No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much. Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.
A friend you haven't made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger
Special Olympics Virginia
= new reply since forum marked as read
What an exceptional young man John Franklin Stephens is! 
Julie
Do you feel the need to defend every D? Quite frankly there are a few we could allow to move to the Party where they belong (Libertarian, Moderate Repub, Nazi, etc) Pointing out that Rahm was an asshole that used the EXACT word being condemned here should be analogous. Instead because he's a D and close with PBO he's given a pass... not by me!
My heart was so touched by this.
MAN! What an elegant response! This deeply thoughtful 30-year-old gentleman has more class than she'd ever have if she lived to be a thousand.
Dear God - and he signs his comment "A friend you haven't made yet." MAN! I have to bookmark this so I can find it to remind myself about the art of rising above it.
BRAVO, Mr. Stephens! BRAVO!!!!!!!!!
Ann Coulter defended calling President Obama a "retard," saying "screw them" to critics of her tweet on Thursday.
Speaking on Alan Colmes' Fox News Radio show, Coulter said that she had no regret over using the word because she wasn't referring to someone with a disability.
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When Holmes said that some people believe the word "retard" is as much a slur as the "n-word," Coulter dismissed her critics as the "word police."
“Oh, screw them,” she said. “That’s what they feel I do? I feel they’re being authoritarian bullying victims.”
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/26/ann-coulter-retard_n_2022621.html
when I was growing up I used to kick the asses of the little snots who called him that 
What would be the motive to "mislead" DU about this thread?
What would the OP possibly gain by misleading?
And what would be lost to the world without you coming to the rescue?
Why do people always need to shit on nice threads?
RL
The thread is, in fact, 'misleading' AFA the timing of it goes. An uncareful reader would likely think that this was written in response to a tweet from Ann after the most recent SOTU (rather than after the 2012 Presidential Debate, when it actually happened).
That is true regardless of whether Babylon 'meant' to mislead, which I'd strongly guess she did not.
Just sayin' 
Thanks for answering for the other poster...
RL
I'm so proud of him and how he wrote.
Feels compelled to give a dignified reply to this piece of shit from this piece of shit...
Well done and I wish him the best in the future
She is one dumb fucker.....just look for her YouTube clip on trying to convince someone that Canada did go to the Vietnam War....typical of this evil shill!!!
