As an aside, I ask sometimes, regarding a politician, “why’s he being retarded”?

The word, although not yet phased out completely, apparantly, by the medical community, is undergoing a transformation, the same transformation enjoyed by the word “idiot”. Many take offense at the former utterance, and I wonder: do they realize that it is quite possible that autistic is just the new, kinder word for “mentally retarded”, which was itself the new lingo for “idiot”.

Thirty years from now the word “autistic” will be called mean and terrible and insensitive, because there will have been made a new, nicer term for it by the industry which coins euphamisms faster than the US Mint. They gave us “PTSD” for “shellshock”, remember?

Find out where the guy they named Down’s syndrome, John Langdon Down, worked and did his research.

Sometimes, just maybe, people who say the former quote, aren’t really your enemy, and wouldn’t treat a mentally retarded person, under whichever label the current establishment has given him this decade, with anything but the utmost respect and love. Just sayin.