obama talks about basketball... and short asians

Oh, Barack. Why you wanna go and do that? Earlier this week Senator Barack Obama appeared via satellite on The Jimmy Kimmel Show and talked about, among other things, basketball. In high school, he played on Punahou's state championship team. When asked if he can dunk, the Senator noted, "You know, there's pretty good basketball in Hawaii, but the only thing is, since, obviously, there are a lot of folks from Asian ancestry in Hawaii, uh, generally, the teams aren't as tall." Aw, come on. He's says it on the video above at around the 3-minute mark.

Now, I'm not really offended by this, since he's not saying that Asians can't play ball, and let's face it, there are a lot of short Asians out there. But I am a bit disappointed that he'd make such a sweeping generalization. Surprisingly, Kimmel doesn't take the opportunity to run with it. This doesn't change my vote, but I didn't want to just give him a pass and ignore it. It deserves to be called out. Disappointing, Senator.