Pardon Me, What Did You Say To Your Father — I Mean The President?

According to a story inside Heart of the Enlightened, U.S. President William Howard Taft was at dinner with his family when one of his sons made an inappropriate remark concerning President Taft.

The dinner party was shocked by the audacity of the boy to be disrespectful to his father, and his mother asked the president,

Aren’t you going to punish our son for his comment?

Well, Taft said, that depends.

If the remark was addressed to me as his father, he will be punished. But if he addressed the comment to the President of the United States, that’s his constitutional privilege.

Source: The Heart of the Enlightened – A book of story-meditation by Anthony De Mello.