I actually empathize with the Prez on this one. I try awfully hard to remember I’m not a kid anymore. I can’t keep going around throwing the word “retarded” into my everyday conversation. As kids, it was part of our vocabulary. Until our teachers weaned us off it.
Now, I have a friend who uses it often enough that I’ve slipped back into it. Humiliating when one actually works with providers of care to the mentally retarded. Sigh. If you hear me say this, a firm glare will suffice.
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You’re not alone in fighting this kind of battle, but I find it wholly exceptional that you are so candid about the matter.
I remember thinking while watching this episode how Obama came across as a common man’s president.
Once you start talking candidly (all those jokes about his omnipresent security), you stop being a politician. Hence the slip!
what? retard is offensive? maybe if we shorten it to ‘tard it’ll take a few years to catch on it means retarded. I think the old argument works, our society is too sensitive to political correctness. The day I can’t go into work and call a douche…a douche…is the day all humanity has failed. Oh wait that already happened…god damn it…
Yeah…well… I certainly agree with you in spirit, *-W-* that our society generally has become much too friggin’ sensitive, BUT…having said that, there is, I believe, an element of “common sense” (and I know what I’m opening myself up to by using that expression), that can be implemented here without sacrificing one’s right to call one’s co-workers “douches,” and here the standard of “common sense” it seems to me, has something to do with the question, “Am I possibly demeaning – or otherwise hurting – a relatively defenseless individual – or group of individuals – beyond those who I am speaking to directly, by what I am saying?” And in this case, I think the application of this standard is fairly obvious: when I call someone a “douche” I’m not necessarily demeaning everyone who engages in the douching process. If anything, I may be demeaning the process itself, but that’s a discussion for another time. However if I publicly (and the workplace is sort of a public venue), refer to someone as a “retard” or even “tard” then there is the possibility that someone who is mentally challenged could be “hurt” by that comment.
Admittedly, there’s often a very vague distinction between being funny and being genuinely hurtful, and not too many people can “get away” with accomplishing both; George Carlin, Richard Prior, Don Rickles, Chris Rock and Dave Chappelle come immediately to mind, and certainly there are others. The point here is, though, that audiences who choose to watch these particular performers do so with the general knowledge of what they are likely to hear, which is to say, they are prepared for a particular context.
I suppose, in the end, it’s mostly a matter, at least for me, of giving people a fair warning of what they might expect to hear from me. I can, and do, say virtually anything when I am with close friends, but if I am in a public setting…well….you get the idea.
Oh, and you are right about “humanity” by the way. Or to use my favorite Douglas Adams quote (again): “In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and has been widely regarded as a bad move.”