Politician Suffers From Foot in Mouth Disease

There was a time when I thought that Nascar was an absolute waste of time. I didn't consider it to be a real sport and I thought that the only people who watched it were true rednecks. Yes I fell victim to the stereotype. There are a lot of people that fit the stereotype but as with anything else a lot of people don't meet it. A couple of years ago if you had told me that my next vacation was going to be to a Busch race in Montreal I would've asked what drugs you were taking. And then I wound up spending time with a friend of mine who is a huge Nascar fan. Somehow I ended up watching a couple of races and the next thing you know I am at home with a weekend off and the race is on. From there it went to the opportunity to see the inaugural Busch race in Montreal and I just had to be there. It was quite the experience. There is nothing quite like the sound of the cars racing by you at 180 mph. The Days of Thunder ride at Canada's Wonderland doesn't even come close.

This weekend I missed the end of the race at Lowe's Motor Speedway in favour of groceries and food. I was also hoping to rent Civic Duty but they were all out. I recorded the race on my PVR but I just couldn't bring myself to actually watch the rest of it when I knew I could find out from the Nascar web site or from Yahoo. I found out that Jeff Gordon won the race but I also came across a different article on the Yahoo web site.

It seems that the Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, Bennie Thompson, insulted Nascar fans. Now first of all I should point out that he represents Mississippi. There are a lot of Nascar fans from Mississippi. So what did he do? His aides were visiting Talladega Superspeedway and Lowe's Motor Speedway. Big deal right? Except that before going he instructed those aides to be immunized against a wide variety of diseases such as hepatitis A, hepatitis B, tetanus, diptheria, and influenza. As people have suggested he seems to believe that Nascar fans may have more communicable diseases then a third world country.

Now the justification.... since of course there has to be a justification.. is that it was about the federal response to emergencies at a crowded venue, such as Lowe's Motor Speedway. That sounds so nice. But they aren't inoculating their staff before going to other sporting events, like baseball, football, basketball or hockey. Often times these events are even more crowded and they are not spread out over a mile long oval. So why are Nascar fans such a risk to national security?

As a few people have already said maybe there needs to be an inoculation for stupidity. Nothing like insulting a sport that has millions of fans and HUGE corporate sponsorship and propagating certain stereotypes about the fans. Don't come near us... we just might be infectious.