Are you offended by Jennifer Aniston's use of the word 'retard'?
Jennifer Aniston already made Bill O'Reilly clutch his Tampax Pearls when she said that women don't need dudes to start a family, and now she's offending a whole new group of the population. On Live with Regis & Kelly this morning, Jennifer Aniston was talking about dragging it up as Barbra Streisand for Harper's Bazaar and Regis said something about how she's always playing dress up. Then Jennifer quickly responded and said, "Yes, I play dress up! I do it for a living, like a retard!" (It's at the 2:00 mark in the clip above) Well, you know where this is headed...
I'm not offended by what celebrities do more than anyone else who may happen to do the same thing.
I don't really like retard being used in that context, but it's not going to make me freak out or anything.
I think we really need to stop holding celebrities up on a pedestal, in which we not only idealize them but also have greater expectations for them than we do for our friends or co-workers.
no. maybe I would if I were a retard.
the nice (relatively) thing about that insult is that the people it could possibly be offensive towards are typically unable to understand it
(however if you actually call a mentally disabled person a retard you're just an asshole)
i've noticed that aspies tend to get butthurt over it as well but they get that way with everything
No. Words evolve and her use of the word 'retard' in that context was no more offensive or a slight on the mentally disadvantaged than if she'd used 'idiot' or 'fool'.
English is an incredibly fluid language - 'lame' now has the meaning of slightly crappy, it is not an insult to the physically impaired. 'Gay' in a certain context means 'stupid', it is not a derogatory comment towards homosexuals, who in turn, appropriated the word from the meaning of 'happy' or 'bright'.
Misunderstandings occur when people can't keep up with these shifts, which happen with frequency, particularly due to internets slang.
Do we have to be offended, exactly, in order to criticize what she said?
Where's the line between "people need [ -ing ] to stop being so damn sensitive" and people needing to be more aware of how often they require that of others?
On Sunday 8/22/10 - 8:49:37 AM chips2001 wrote: No. Words evolve and her use of the word 'retard' in that context was no more offensive or a slight on the mentally disadvantaged than if she'd used 'idiot' or 'fool'.
I agree with this pretty much, I don't like the word retard but I tend to overlook it in that context. However, words do evolve but the word retard still has certain connotations. She wouldn't have used it if there was a disabled person near her.
On Sunday 8/22/10 - 8:57:13 AM IRLIteach wrote: Do we have to be offended, exactly, in order to criticize what she said? Where's the line between "people need [ -ing ] to stop being so damn sensitive" and people needing to be more aware of how often they require that of others?
Chips nailed this pretty well, and I also agree with what IRLI wrote (has to happen once in awhile).
I'd like to add though that I think the word retarded is going through the same treatment negro did a few decades back. While retarded is still the correct clinical term in many cases, it has such negative connotations that clinicians are afraid to use it. And that's nuts. It is the negative stereo types that need to be fought, the abusive intents we need to dig out and eradicate. Censoring correctly used language is just silly.
dacash - Is retarded a correct clinical term in America? I didn't know that. Here it's not, it could be taken as pretty offensive. That kind of puts the question in a different light now.
If "retarded" is an actual clinical term that is still in use, that makes it even worse to use it colloquially imo. "Lame" may have transitioned into a less offensive slang use, but if "retarded" hasn't, it shouldn't be co-oped.
"Where's the line between 'people need [ -ing ] to stop being so damn sensitive' and people needing to be more aware of how often they require that of others?"
I wanted to add to this, in case I wasn't completely clear: sometimes people do need to stop being so sensitive, but other times, that's an accusation thrown out by weaker people who really just don't want to be held to any standards themselves, so they blame others as being sensitive in order to avoid being accountable themselves. There's an irony in all of that...
On Sunday 8/22/10 - 4:49:54 PM Pedantic wrote: dacash - Is retarded a correct clinical term in America? I didn't know that. Here it's not, it could be taken as pretty offensive. That kind of puts the question in a different light now.
I know brits use some different terms here and there, but how would you describe growth that is slower than the norm?
No, it doesn't offend me in the least. If Ms. Aniston were using the term "retard" in the presence of an actual ret...er, mentally challenged person, then I might call her a bitch for it.
Oh wait. She was on the Regis show..
F*ck it, still letting it slide.
Its not going to retard the tolerence level of my not overly-delicate sensibilities.
Anyhow, 'retard' just means 'lateness' en francais. 'Tard' means 'late'. I'm guessing retard got its clinical term as in 'lateness of cognitive development' or something.
The overly politically correct make me want to do all sorts of things that would piss off their type.
On Sunday 8/22/10 - 4:49:54 PM Pedantic wrote: dacash - Is retarded a correct clinical term in America? I didn't know that. Here it's not, it could be taken as pretty offensive. That kind of puts the question in a different light now.
Regarding clinical use, it's dropped off substantially. Papers until the 1980s or so use it regularly, but recently it's avoided in all but the most unavoidable contexts, such as citing said older papers or referencing the older diagnoses. So it still does carry clinical meaning, but at the same time, clinical use reacted to the common usage of the word and backed away from it.
I really don't think we're ever going to settle on a clinical word, though, now that I think about it...
Historically, we've had cretin, imbecile, idiot, and moron as originally clinical terms, and they keep picking up in common usage and dropped because of it.
No, I think that "retard" is the worst word yet to get labeled as politically incorrect. They are MENTALLY RETARDED, for f*ck's sake, the term came from the actual medical definition of their condition.
I absolutely hate the term "special needs", as it's associated directly with the mentally retarded and other forms of mental impairment, rather than ANY kind of special needs condition (vision/hearing impairment, paralysis, any kind of debilitating condition). And obviously a blind person isn't going to want people to assume they're retarded just because they have "special needs", but that's what's become of the term.
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