Obamateurism of the Day

Today’s OOTD comes to us from The Opinionator, the New York Times political blog, which managed to watch the entire Barack Obama appearance on The View last week, quite an accomplishment in itself.  It turns out that Obama flunked human development not once but twice:

While President Obama’s odd characterization on “The View” of African-Americans as a “mongrel people” has set the blogosphere aflutter, it was something else he told the assembled ladies that struck me as more significant. According to Sam Youngman of The Hill, in a discussion on racism, “Obama noted ‘there’s still a reptilian side of our brain’ that leads people to not trust others ‘if somebody sounds different or looks different.’ ”

Given that the president’s academic background is in Constitutional law and not evolutionary biology, we can forgive him if he’s unaware that the neuroscientist Paul McLean’s triune brain theory, which popularized the idea that the basal ganglia was a “reptile brain” constantly driving mankind toward his basest instincts, has long fallen out of scientific favor.

Remember when Democrats promised to restore science to its rightful place?  It would be helpful if they understood it first.

Got an Obamateurism of the Day? If you see a foul-up by Barack Obama, e-mail it to me at [email protected] with the quote and the link to the Obamateurism. I’ll post the best Obamateurisms on a daily basis, depending on how many I receive. Include a link to your blog, and I’ll give some link love as well. And unlike Slate, I promise to end the feature when Barack Obama leaves office.

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