Republican presidential candidate Ben Carson. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong) Somehow, the word “gaffe” doesn’t quite describe Ben Carson’s latest foot-in-mouth moment. His stumble on the stump in Iowa on Thursday was awkward, embarrassing, possibly painful — anything but funny. And it involved a school kid who — how to put this pleasantly? — perhaps in the view of his fifth-grade classmates does not shine as brightly as they do, and was called out for his shortcomings in front of 500 people at a campaign rally. By a man who wants to be president. Here’s how it went down: Carson has told a story countless times about how he was a “horrible student” who was called “dummy” as a kid. He’s told it in his books and it’s been retold in books about him, including in “ Gifted Hands, Kids Edition ” — in a chapter called “The Dumbest Kid in Fifth Grade.” Though the veracity of some of Carson’s moral fables has been questioned , he contends his mother took him aside and told him to buckle down or he’d be sweeping floors for the rest of his life. He did, of course, and the rest is history for a neurosurgeon with 38 honorary degrees to prove his worth. It’s inspiring — or, at least, supposed to be inspiring for those kept out of the operating theater by lack of ability or opportunity. But it flopped yesterday when, in a presumably well-intentioned effort to relate to a group of schoolchildren in Cedar Rapids, Carson told the tale once more — then, unf
from Breaking News http://ift.tt/1OR9Ss7
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