On last Thursday&#8217;s &#8220;Tonight Show,&#8221; President Barack Obama sat down with Jay Leno for the first visit to the program by a sitting president. The next morning, some readers asked why <em>The Kansas City Star </em>didn&#8217;t mention the most noteworthy part of the appearance.</p><p>&#8220;I can&#8217;t believe the paper didn&#8217;t talk about Obama making a joke about how his bowling is so bad that it&#8217;s &#8216;like the Special Olympics or something,&#8217;&#8194;&#8221; said one caller.</p><p>&#8220;If this were George Bush, it would have been above the fold,&#8221; e-mailed another.</p><p>An Associated Press story about the show did run on Page A-2 Friday morning, but it talked about Obama&#8217;s comments on AIG and the recession. It didn&#8217;t mention the Special Olympics crack.</p><p>The White House got out ahead of the hubbub, with White House spokesman Bill Burton telling reporters on Air Force One &#8212; before the show aired &#8212; that the president &#8220;in no way intended to disparage the Special Olympics.&#8221;</p><p>Of course, that didn&#8217;t stop the public&#8217;s reaction.</p><p>KansasCity.com posted an Associated Press story about the joke at 12:21 Friday morning. And as the morning news and commentary cycle got going, it became one of the big talking points of the day, dominating talk shows and blogs.</p><p>This kind of story is a perfect example of how timing can make printed news look out of step with the world of real-time news and commentary. The interview ran late at night, and the blowback gained steam while <em>The Star </em>was being printed and delivered. Dave Helling then revisited the next-day reaction in a Page A-1 story on Saturday.</p><p>I think it&#8217;s fair to debate whether an insensitive joke by a president actually amounts to news or not. All presidents&#8217; words are parsed in extreme detail, and that scrutiny has increased to unprecedented levels with today&#8217;s round-the-clock news commentary and hundreds of political bloggers weighing in, and often elevating many topics&#8217; profiles way above their actual import.</p><p>I remember clearly not so long ago when using the word &#8220;retarded&#8221; pejoratively was considered as classless as a racist remark. After 15 years of Farrelly Brothers movies and anonymous Web comments, it seems most of that progress has been ceded.</p><p>It&#8217;s too early in Obama&#8217;s tenure to see whether he&#8217;ll be pegged with the reputation for making insensitive remarks off the cuff &#8212; but those impressions can take hold quickly, especially if political opponents exploit them effectively. And the mainstream media also plays a major role in keeping those topics front and center.</p><p>I&#8217;m reminded of a reader who contacted me years ago to complain about coverage of President Bush trying to open a locked door after a press conference. &#8220;Why don&#8217;t we focus on his policy, not him trying to open a door he didn&#8217;t know was locked?&#8221; she asked, adding, &#8220;By the way, I voted for Kerry and I think there are more important things to write about.&#8221;