I hate the word “retarded” when it’s used to insult someone.
In this age of political correctness, I know people are tired of all these “special interest groups” who insist on exchanging common word usage for PC lingo: He’s not a ‘janitor’, he’s a ‘sanitation engineer’. She’s not ‘chairman of the board’, she’s ‘chairperson of the board’. Ugh. I hate it too, I really do
But I draw the line at calling someone retarded. Because retarded is actually a medical diagnosis. My sister is mentally retarded, as a result of cerebral palsy. So when I hear people tossing out the phrase “Oh, he’s retarded” as an insult, it gets my back up. My sister IS retarded.... so just what are you saying when you use it as an insult? I try not to let it get to me, but it does. Seriously, there are so many excellent insults out there..... why take the easy way out and use a word that can cause so much pain to so many? Here’s just a few:
• His elevator doesn't reach the top floor
• He checked out of Hotel Brainy years ago
• If he was any more stupid he would photosynthesise in sunlight
• He's ten cents short of a dollar
• She's a macaroni salad short of a picnic
• He's got a rip in his marbles bag
• She hasn't got both hands on the steering wheel
• When you look in his eyes you can see that there is no one driving
• Lights on, door open, no one at home
I could go on and on.
The double-standard here is I use the words “crazy” and “psycho” to insult people. And that must hurt people who suffer from mental issues just as much as retarded hurts me. I’m working on it. I hope you do too.
What timing. No sooner did I post this than this article showed up in my news reader:
ReplyDeletehttp://pagingdrgupta.blogs.cnn.com/2010/09/27/congress-eliminates-the-r-word/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+rss%2Fcnn_gupta+%28Blog%3A+Paging+Dr.+Gupta%29
While I'm not sure how I feel about banning the word in medical vernacular, and I'm really not sure how I feel about being on the same side of an issue with Sarah Palin, there you go.
Yes, Jon Stewart did a funny with Wyatt Cenak and John Oliver (the N-word and the R-word, respectively). They actually said the R word, but not the N word...which was key to the argument that the N word was indeed more scary, if not actually worse than the R word.
ReplyDeleteAnd agreeing with Sarah Palin is alarming, but in this context I feel it's ...ok.
Mind you, if ANYone but Rahm Emmanuel had said it, I'll bet you $100 she wouldn't have noticed.