White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel has apologized to the head of the Special Olympics after the Wall Street Journal reported he privately called a group of liberal activists “f—ing retarded.”
Rahm vowed that from now on he would refer to liberal activists by the appropriate term: f—ing douchebags.
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Matt Taibbi on Retardgate: “One of the more interesting features of modern America is this mania people have for flipping over the usages of certain words. This thing with Rahm Emanuel is a perfect example. His outburst is now going to become a national news story because Sarah Palin took offense at the word “retarded,” as opposed to the reason it should be making news — the notion of Rahm Emanuel, a White House official, telling progressive activist groups not to run ads against Democrats, and those groups actually listening. The latter story is a billion times more shameful and obnoxious, but instead of any furor there, we’re going to have to get another soap opera over somebody using a naughty word.”
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In response to Pulpcity’s comment below, this from Mark Kirkorian at NRO (courtesy of Sully):
His use of “retarded” has no more connection to people with Down Syndrome and other forms of retardation than his constant use of the F word refers to the act of coitus. “Moron,” imbecile,” and “idiot” used to be terms used by psychology to denote different gradations of retardation, but now we just use them as epithets, and that’s obviously how he was using “retarded.” Emanuel is a vulgar jerk, but can’t conservatives, at least, refrain from grievance-mongering and hair-trigger offense-taking? I realize pouncing on him is payback for all the stuff the Left does to us, but, really, someone has got to be a grown-up in this country, and conservatives are the only candidates left.
I suppose one could always substitute the word moronic for retarded and avoid offense, but it seems rather arbitrary, as they both at once time referred to actual diagnoses. To bring this all back to comedy (which is the point of this blog, after all), I recall seeing a comedian once (can’t remember who it was) who observed that in the old days a patient could be diagnosed as an imbecile or a moron and then show improvement and so be upgraded to idiot. Cold comfort indeed. When I saw Lewis Black live a few years ago, he did a great bit on the word retarded – basically he said the word is still around because certain things are, well, retarded. I looked for a clip of it but couldn’t find it.
If by “naughty word,” he means the f-word, I’m with him. But I think “the R-word,” as I’ve seen it referred to on msnbc.com is the real issue – and, for me, the use of “retarded” in that implied-insult kind of way is on par with any racial slur, which generally is (and should be) a big story.
Oh – but I like his other point about the no-ads thing too.