Cleaning Obama's Clock

One of the sillier stories of the last week was of the boy who came to school with a "clock" that looked much like a bomb.  The boy got in trouble briefly, but that is not the point.  No, the point is that our clock carrier is a Moslem.  As a result, Ahmed, the boy in question became a celebrity.  Even president Obama rushed in to say that it was wrong to discriminate against this boy.  After all, when a kid brings something that looks much like a bomb to school we should not jump to conclusions especially if he is a Moslem.  (All those other kids who got in trouble for drawing guns or using their hands to be pretend guns are a different story, of course.)  Obama even invited the kid to the White House.  It was to be the perfect teachable moment to combat American racism against Moslems.  Obama celebrated Ahmed for using his creativity to assemble the clock.  The usual Obamanauts ran to support Ahmed as well.  They even created a scholarship fund with thousands of dollars in it to help the kid.

Well now the story is coming apart and quickly.  It turns out that Ahmed did not build the clock.  Instead, what he took to school was an old Radio Shack alarm clock that he had disassembled so that it looked like a bomb.  It was not a triumph of ingenuity.  It seems now that it was more likely a ploy to get sympathy once the inevitable response to the non-bomb came to light.  It was a spectacular success from Ahmed's perspective.  It also makes Obama look like an idiot with a knee jerk reaction to anything of this sort.