When I was younger, one of my teachers often told our class, “It’s better to be thought a fool, then to open your mouth, and remove all doubt.”
I’m beginning to think that someone may need to repeat this phrase to Presidential candidate, Dr. Ben Carson.
Earlier this week, Carson was at a campaign rally in Iowa. In an effort to prove that he’s just like everyone else, Carson asked who in attendance was in the 5th grade.
After these students identified themselves, Carson asked who was the worst student in the 5th grade class.
As The Washington Post put it so eloquently, “The question hung briefly in the air – a humiliation bomb waiting to be told it’s target. Then, the finger-pointing began.”
The students from a local Christian school all singled out one young man as the worst student in the 5th grade class.
What makes this worse, is that instead of trying to halt this collision course of what-was-he-thinking, Carson dug in.
He attempted to make the point that he too, in 5th grade, was the worst student in his class. And (cue awe), look at what he’s become! Look at where he got in life!
It is debatable whether such a comparison to the gaffe-prone, bumbling neurosurgeon is a good thing, and the fact that Carson thought singling out a 5th grader for this dubious honor was a good idea, further supports this belief.
When questioned, Carson defended what he did (of course), by saying that he thought that the students wouldn’t pick one specific 5th grade student, but point to a number of different people. This reasoning is also flawed, because instead of just one 5th grader being humiliated, now you have a number of them being singled out.
Suffice it to say, this was not one of Carson’s best days on the trail. So on the scale of smarter than a 5th grader, I think that even a 5th grader knows that bullying someone isn’t a good idea.
Featured image a combination of two images. The Carson image via Gage Skidmore is available under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial license. The child image via Pixabay is available under a Creative Commons – Public Domain dedication.
