Obama Misspells ‘Respect’ During Aretha Franklin Tribute [Video]

President Barack Obama misspelled the word “respect” during a White House tribute to Aretha Franklin.

The occasion for the presidential spelling gaffe was the “Women of Soul” event on Thursday evening.

Respect was, of course, a big hit for Aretha Franklin, and became her signature song.

Said the president, “When Aretha first told us what R-S-P-E-C-T meant to her, she had no idea it would become a rallying cry for African Americans and women and anyone else who felt marginalized because of what they looked like, who they loved.”

As TMZ observed, “Whether you want to hear it or not, Obama got a pass that George W — the Bush famous for malaprops — would never have gotten.”

It’s not just Bush; the Big Media tends to play up flubs of any kind by GOP politicians while doing the opposite for Democrats. For example, Vice President Dan Quayle was practically run out of town for incorrectly spelling potato in 1992.

CNN anchor Ashleigh Banfield made the fascinating claim that the president was actually trying to determine if everyone was paying attention. But colleague John Berman seemed to admit that if it wasn’t for “liberal bias,” the media would me making a bigger deal out of Obama’s spelling error. Added Berman, however, “I get hot flashes whenever people spell on TV because I can’t spell. I would misspell ‘respect,’ so I have a little bit of sympathy for him.”

Those who engage in public speaking on a regular basis such as high-profile politicians can easily get tongue-tied, but that shouldn’t be the end of the world, regardless of ideology or party.

According to The Hill, the official White House transcript actually contains the correct spelling of respect with all the vowels intact. “The White House stenographer appears to have given President Obama a little too much ‘respect’… But anyone reading the official transcript of the event provided by the White House would have had no idea of the president’s mistake. In that version, the president correctly spells out the word.”

Some of the underreported gaffes by the incumbent president include referring to a Navy corpsman as “corpse man,” talking about visiting “57” states, claiming that Charleston, S.C., and Savannah, Ga., were in the Gulf of Mexico, noting in a Memorial Day speech that some “fallen heroes” were in the audience, and making the observation that “The odds of dying in a terrorist attack are a lot lower than they are of dying in a car accident, unfortunately.”