Mark Davis' Blog
February 04, 2010
THE R-WORD
I can’t believe I’m writing a blog piece about this. And believe me, I wouldn’t be if it were the one-day story it should have been.
I refer to the firestorm lit by the revelation that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel chose a very unfortunate way to criticize a strategy suggested by liberal activists during an August meeting.
His characterization, which somehow stayed off the radar for half a year? “Retarded.” Actually, “f---ing retarded” is the full quote, but the f-bomb isn’t the problem.
The “R-word” is, for obvious reasons. Emanuel chose to use a derisive term blurted out on school playgrounds for decades. When my friends and I were all nine-- and using the term with wild abandon-- no one told us that using it disapprovingly was an offense against real people who actually suffered from mental retardation. Or if they did tell us, we didn’t care-- because we were nine.
By adulthood, though, we are expected to lose the childhood knack for grossly insensitive taunts, especially in public. Emanuel’s sin was in failing to suppress a blurt he probably made during his own childhood and which may escape his lips even now under more guarded circumstances.
That’s bad enough, and his apology to people with mental disabilities and their families is appropriate. But only in some alternate universe is that the end of the story.
In today’s America, the first order of business is to inflame the outrage with a mischaracterization of the actual offense. For this, along came Sarah Palin, who took time out from packing for the Tea Party convention to fire off a Facebook note condemning Emanuel's “slur against all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities,” suggesting that it deserved reproach similar to use of the “N-word.”
I love Sarah Palin and eagerly anticipate her contributions to America in the future. But from her absurd and intentional misreading of a stupid David Letterman joke to this episode, she needs to get a handle on what people actually say, even when it ventures into areas where she has a right to added indignation, in this case as the mother of a Down’s syndrome child.
Emanuel had no more intent to actually malign the mentally challenged than my friends and I did when we called each other the R-word in the 1960s. It was pure juvenile shock talk then, probably less so on today’s more sensitive playgrounds, and thoroughly inappropriate in proper adult conversation. But that’s it. People were offended, understandably. He apologized, properly. But that’s never enough any more.
The overreaction reflex-- the urge to take an unfortunate or unwise utterance and launch it beyond its actual gravity-- is a popular sport these days. Ask Trent Lott and Harry Reid. But it also sparks a domino effect that leads to additional reactions that are a further offense to clarity and rationality.
While the “N-word” is a horribly hurtful term invented expressly for the purpose of disparaging blacks, “retarded” was coined as a valid clinical term for those with reduced cognitive function. The fact that it was co-opted by generations of oafish schoolboys gave it a stigma so strong that even groups helping such people have distanced from the term.
A few years ago, the Association for Retarded Citizens began a gradual but now complete nationwide name change: to “The Arc.”
“The Arc?” What was that? I envisioned great confusion involving Noah, the Holy Grail, maybe geometry or welding. Even this noble group felt the need to distance-- in name if not acronym-- from a diagnostic term still valid today.
But fueled by the current circus, there are those who are actually suggesting that it should now be purged from every law, every pamphlet, every document referring to the actual condition.
So here we are. Humanity has walked on the moon, cured diseases and created art of immeasurable value. But in the early 21st century, we can’t even distinguish between the usage of a word in a cruel context and its use in a proper context. Even under the umbrella of its misuse, we can’t differentiate between thoughtlessness and pernicious malice.
It is an adolescent streak that leads to the use of the R-word as an epithet. But the ridiculousness of this episode reveals an even wider need for everybody to just grow up.
posted by Mark Davis, WBAP on 2/4/2010 1:12:25 PM
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