re: #56 Irenicum

Thanks for mentioning that. I’ll definitely read that. There are so many preconceived notions of what it is to be “retarded” intellectually. It’s like some people haven’t ever gotten past the of Mice and Men stereotype. Ironically, it’s those so willing to use the phrase “retard” who are emotionally and spiritually disabled. I’ll take any intellectually disabled person who is emotionally smart over any intellectual asshole like Rush.

A lot of comedians I like use the term. I don’t think they’re emotionally disabled, I think they’re just using a colloquial insult that has been in use for decades. Maybe it’s to the level of profanity, but I wouldn’t say it’s the equal of a slur, because we still refer to able-bodied people as disabled, as a turn of phrase, as slang. Like Windy said, we refer to people as “brain damaged”, “blind”, “lame”, “deaf”. I don’t think I insulted all blind people by hollering at the ref during a Sonics game when he clearly missed a travelling call in the 4th quarter.