I've always said, Kevy's 5-star all the way.

There are plenty of ways to let someone know you find them cognitively inept. But I've long thought that people who use "retard" as a casual slur do sound pretty boorish.

There was an episode of The Larry Sanders Show in which Hank guest-hosted for a couple of nights. His first time up was a rousing success, but on his second night, he lost the audience by his use of the word "retard." It prompted a classic TV moment of oh-so-awkward discomfort comedy. Another pop culture moment that comes to mind is in Woody Allen's wonderful comedy Bullets Over Broadway, in which the ditzy gangster moll wannabe star Olive calls something "retarded" in her own completely clueless way. I recall thinking that this singular moment, which succeeds in making Olive look as stupid as humanly possible, should have put that particular epithet into permanent retirement. Check it out. (If for no other reason than that its one of Woody's best and most accessible comedies.)

I'm fine with it, but it is a game of moving goalposts.

If no person is ever called retarded but rather autistic it is just natural (without saying it is good or bad) that in a certain amount of time whatever new term is used will become bad. I can see in 20 years one friend saying to another who just locked his keys in the car "man, you're so autistic sometimes."

Similarly, the terms of African Americans did the same thing over the years. Working in the serials collection at the Universal of Washington it was interesting to see long running academic journals focused on blacks in America change their name every couple decades as the currently acceptable term for blacks became tainted as derogatory.

In the case of retarded, I think a more likely course to success is to not try and get rid of the word altogether but rather to give it up and let it be a word meaning "boneheaded" or "stupid" and do our best to just make sure it no longer actually has a clinical or real person definition. Kind of like has happened with moron and idiot. We still have the general non-clinical meaning but no actual morons or idiots are offended because there is nobody that actually falls under the label any more.

I would never call a person who is developmentally disabled a retard or retarded. I would call Kevy a retard if he deserved. it.


As a mater of fact, I have started using this word again ever since the commercials for "Stop Using the Word "Gay". Both of terms I never used and suddenly they have been added back to my vocabulary.

Does this mean I have to stop making a face, hitting my chest with a limp wrist and saying "duurrrrr" when people act stupidly? ;)




True. So what?

If?







Oh wait; that was about me...

I thought I pretty much explained the "so what" as I see it. Why, even if successful, it likely isn't going to solve the underlying issue. That just as words can gain new definitions they can shed them as well (in usage if not in the OED), and that in this case it may be more productive in the long term to shed a definition than to try and salt this linguistic ground and hope you can avoid a repeat on the new homestead.

Section 26 of the California Penal Code lists the categories of people who may not be prosecuted for the crimes they commit. Among these are "persons who are mentally incapacitated." This is new language, added last year, to replace the previous description, "idiots."

A year or so earlier, I attended a continuing legal education session where the presenter was going through the statute. He got to "idiots," looked out at us and said, "Ah, if only." The room broke up.

Retard seems to be in resurgence - a staple of my childhood, I don't think I heard the word uttered for many years until quite recently. Now it's everywhere. My African-American Boss uses it all the time, even though her Asian admin assistant has an autistic child. My Lesbian colleague called her on that, but she herself keeps calling things gay.

I have to agree with NA on this. I wouldn't call a mentally challenged person retarded, but I probably would call a stupid person (or person behaving stupidly) that.

IMHO, "retard" only marginally applies to the developmentally disabled any more, and I think continued use of it only in regards to non-disabled people will further separate the slur from its original victims and convert the meaning.

You can't win a game of moving goal posts if you continually aim at the current endzone.