Special Olympians know the news. Conservative outrage says they don't, need to be sheltered, used.

I’ve had some major disagreements Chris Rickert’s more conservative columns, but not this time. The zombie protest at the Special Olympics brought out an unexpected error in the way many of us think about the mentally delayed, including myself. WKOW 27 News:

WSJ: Fox News, Wisconsin’s own MacIver Institute and others on the right are eagerly flogging the zombie protest Wednesday that disrupted a ceremony for Special Olympics participants at the Capitol. Another example of how Gov. Scott Walker’s loudest opponents are more interested in making self-righteous, self-centered spectacles of themselves, they say, than in simply shutting up for a few minutes in deference to an entirely positive and nonpolitical event.

But then again, every act of protest — from the “slobs” (in the words of Republican state Sen. Glenn Grothman) sleeping in the Capitol to dignified firefighters bagpiping through the rotunda — is going to upset someone. It wouldn’t be an act of protest if it didn’t.

What bothers me is the presumption, shared in predictably unequal degrees by both sides, that the Special Olympics serves a clientele young and mentally delayed enough as to be protected from the dirtiness of politics and policy. In fact, according to Kelly Kloepping of Special Olympics Wisconsin; the eight Special Olympians at Wednesday’s function ranged in age from 16 to 50.

More important, it’s not as if Special Olympians are incapable of understanding or being interested in what’s going on in Wisconsin politics these days.

John Shaw, advocacy coordinator for the Wisconsin Board for People with Developmental Disabilities, told me he’d rather see our elections turn on the votes of intellectually delayed people who study the issues than on the votes of people of average intelligence who simply vote straight Democratic or straight Republican. “You would not believe how much they actually study the candidates,” he told me of the intellectually delayed voters he knows. You would not believe how much they actually study the candidates.”

Kelly Kloepping of Special Olympics Wisconsin Special Olympians are “much like you and I” … They enjoy the thrill of competition. And like us, I’m sure most of them are capable of deciding when a political protest goes too far — or not. And voting accordingly.