Sunday, July 22, 2007

* RETARDED

As an advocate of the developmentally disabled, I despise those comedians who must say "RETARDED" over and over, as part of their limited & relatively talentless shtick: e.g., Carlos Mencia. (And hey, Carlos, no Indian with any self-respect would mock his own race like you mock yours.) I've also noticed, in this decade, that the use of the word "retarded" among the general public—and above all, MY STUDENTS—has become even more blatant. I always stop them in class when they use the word: "you mean 'developmentally disabled?'" Obviously, they're trying to redefine a term in a way that I both resent and deny. Ditto "gay," as my students say: "that's so gay." I ask them: "you mean homosexual, and in an obvious negative connotation?" Nope, they have no clue thereof—things are just "gay"—I guess because, like Paris Hilton, they haven't got outside their six-friend, six-video-game, 600-pop-song, 6,000-word-vocabulary "retarded" lives. Excuse me for my language.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

sometimes your posts get on my nerves, but this one is actually funny, and has a valid point.

Tom Gannon said...

Thank you. They get on my nerves, too, because of either the tortuous syntax or the tortuous ideas. But I can't fix either. Sometimes I wish I hadn't begun this enterprise--yet another obsession in my life--in the first place: realizing, especially, that my personality is--well--pretty acerbic.

Uh, is your first name Mary? And did you publish an essay in GENOCIDE OF THE MIND? Excellent piece, and I reviewed the whole book for the GREAT PLAINS QUARTERLY. (Excuse me if I'm just pissing in the wind.)

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