I just posted a rant elsewhere about mainstream media making context-free references to ""news" stories discussing "false Internet rumors that Barack Obama is a Muslim," or even editorials that do the same. How is it that they can find the space to discuss every single potential nuance of whether Obama should be held responsible for the radical behavior decades earlier of someone he worked with on issues of common interest, but never mention what the hell being a Muslim has to do with a person's ability to run this country? Much easier to leave it hanging out there in the ether, unattended, and let readers draw their own conclusions, however bigoted and ill-informed they may be.

In the meantime, until we all reach enlightenment, you should really knock off the use of the word "retarded" to describe bigoted idiots. It's an insult to non-bigoted developmentally delayed people everywhere.

P.S. That's what I get for insomniac 2:30 a.m. posting; I did not mean to imply above that Obama has ever in his adult life been a practicing Muslim (by all reasonable accounts I've seen, he hasn't), but that what the hell would that have to do with his ability to run the U.S., even if it were true? It's just left unsaid that somehow we are supposed to believe that non-Christians would make inferior Presidents. Heck, the same used to be implied (and perhaps flat-out stated; I wasn't born yet and haven't made a study of it, so I really don't know) of the idea of a Catholic President.

McCain is using ethnic fears to help generate support for him in this election. I hate it! But, don't fall to his level, which is well below anything I have seen in my 56 years, by using the word retard. The problem is, a mentally handicaped person can't help themselves, the woman that called Obama a Arab is much more dangerous because she knew what she was doing.

As Eva should know, we here don't give a fuck about retarded political correctness in language. She can save such retarded protestations for other venues.

It has at least as much to do with linguistic accuracy as with political correctness. There are plenty of American voters who manage just fine in other intellectual activities and ought to know better who are still bigots.

Ja.

Actually I like "developmentally delayed". I will add it to such expressions as "longitudinally challenged" for midgets.

Slurs have this property that they're either funny or just unsubtly degenerate. Either way, they're not offensive.

Some politically correct expressions on the other hand have some kind of condescendence whose venom I like.

Abbie Hoffman once wrote an article in the NYT when he was still on the lam, and while talking about being pursued by special agents of the FBI, noted parenthetically that he'd never met an agent of the FBI that wasn't special.
I don't know if anyone else ever got that joke. Floored me.

I actually did post a response, and if someone would liberate it from the spam filter I would be most grateful.

As for "we here don't give a fuck about political correctness in language," speak for yourselves. I prefer to be linguistically accurate, myself. Not to mention that you look like schmucks if you use slurs in the process of denouncing others for using slurs.

Man, I hate to be on the same politically incorrect side as Mr. Col "occasionally-ever-so-slightly-less-than-diplomatic" Lounsbury, but I gotta say I'm a fan of retard as a slur. Let's face it, as Shaheen has aptly demonstrated, any term referring to people of reduced mental capacity is going to be co-opted as an insult eventually, same as any term referring to excretory or sexual functions. Just the nature of the human beast. The words idiot, moron, imbecile and cretin once all had precise definitions as well and were used in scientific discourse - taking those away from Col would just be cruel. Calling someone who is truly developmentally disabled a "retard" or anything else meant to castigate them for something over which they have no control is cruel and boorish, I agree. Calling some moronic douchebag a retard is succinct and to the point. Besides it is such a euphonious insult - retard.

Heck, I even refer to one of my cats as "retard."

Look at him! Gaze upon his retarded cuteness!! You cannot resist the cutedardation!!!

Well, in modern Western Hemisphere English-language usage, "retard" is a slur that IMHO one does not use in talking about serious issues, at least not if one wants to be taken seriously, and particularly if one is concerned with others co-opting legitimate descriptors as slurs.

(Though as I recently discovered at work, idiot is still used as a technical term at least in some parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, in a context that may amsue some of you.)

Now does anyone care to actually return to the substance of this post, or would you rather continue picking on me, even though another poster above made essentially the same point and so far nobody has taken issue with him?

(Though as I recently discovered at work, idiot is still used as a technical term at least in some parts of the Eastern Hemisphere, in a context that may amuse some of you.)

Wow. That really sounds retarded.

{ducking..}

Don't be so fucking uptight and ... "delayed" in your understanding. It's an insult not a slur. Your precious special temperament notwithstanding.

I find it incredible you actually wrote something so utterly drooling moronic as "particularly if one is concerned with others co-opting legitimate descriptors as slurs." - "co-opting"?

Every time the delicate change the term, the term picks up the insult, as like it or not, stupidity and by association mental retardation carries in its very being inherent insult. At least until such qualities become positives. Not likely in this reality. Of course precious sensitive Leftists shall ever battle against reality.

And that does look like a spastic cat.

1) The use of retard here is a bit retar...um, improper.

2) Why put [sic] after 'I have read'?

Jordan, presumingly because it must be a mistake - she 'read'? more probably absorbed propaganda from some bottom-feeding junk email, or heard it on FOX... see http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/13/us/politics/13martin.html?em for a story about part of the chain of the rumor mill against Obama.

either way, reading is a very unlikely way to describe what is hardly the seeking of knowledge.

as to McCain not challenging the core racism of her statement, Obama has also yet to say the obvious: "I'm not a muslim, but so what if I was?" - because it's obviously not acceptable in America to be muslim or speak Arabic.

dawud: An earlier statement of in response to the Muslim rumor was:

You know, this is actually an insult against Muslim Americans, something that we don't spend a lot of time talking about. And sometimes I've been derelict in pointing that out. You know, there are wonderful Muslim Americans all across the country who are doing wonderful things. And for this to be used as sort of an insult or to raise suspicions about me I think is unfortunate. And it's not what America is all about.

If Obama spoke like that more often and forcefully, though tardy, he might more helpfully retard the progress of negative rumors and attitudes.

"retarded old woman" -> "developmentally challenged old woman"

or "differently brain-abled senior human of female gender orientation"?

http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/10/13/campbell.brown.obama/

kudos to CNN's Campbell Brown for being sane and lucid:

Now, I commend Sen. McCain for correcting that woman, for setting the record straight. But I do have one question -- so what if he was?

So what if Obama was Arab or Muslim? So what if John McCain was Arab or Muslim? Would it matter?

When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim become dirty words? The equivalent of dishonorable or radical?

Whenever this gets raised, the implication is that there is something wrong with being an Arab-American or a Muslim. And the media is complicit here, too. We've all been too quick to accept the idea that calling someone Muslim is a slur.

I feel like I am stating the obvious here, but apparently it needs to be said: There is a difference between radical Muslims who support jihad against America and Muslims who want to practice their religion freely and have normal lives like anyone else.

There are more than 1.2 million Arab-Americans and about 7 million Muslim-Americans, former Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, successful business people, normal average Americans from all walks of life.

These are the people being maligned here, and we can only imagine how this conversation plays in the Muslim world. We can't tolerate this ignorance -- not in the media, not on the campaign trail.

Of course, he's not an Arab. Of course, he's not a Muslim. But honestly, it shouldn't matter.

When did that become a disqualifier for higher office in our country? When did Arab and Muslim become dirty words? The equivalent of dishonorable or radical?

I'm guessing when a couple of towers fell, and Dubya invaded Eyeraq, and Whitehouse propaganda managed to fuse Osama and Saddam into one huge fuck-off Ayrab Mozzlem bogeyman in the minds of the average Sarah Palin supporter.

McCain really doesn't seem to get it - during the debates last night, he complained about his feeling 'hurt' by Mr. Lewis's comparison of the tone of his and Palin's rallies to the segregationist 60s period of George Wallace, and that the "fire" started would burn them...

Constance Rice, a civil rights lawyer in L.A. who supports Obama and spoke at mosques in the LA region defending the Obama campaign during the spring and summer, writes an editorial for the L.A. Times: "'Muslim' shouldn't be a slur."

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-rice15-2008oct15,0,5744288.story

The fact is, neither McCain nor Obama -- who continues to combat absurd attacks on his Americanness -- has been willing to speak out against the implicit slurs against Arabs and Islam.

Is it really too difficult for Obama to respond: "For the hundredth time, I am a Christian, and if you are suggesting that there is something wrong with Islam or being a Muslim, you are wrong"?

Would it be so hard for McCain to say: "There is no room in my campaign or in America for religious or ethnic intolerance -- that's what we're fighting against"?

If I weren't so annoyed at all the misinformation flying around about Obama, including crazy unfounded rumors (and lawsuits, for that matter) alleging that he wasn't even born in the U.S. and is therefore ineligible to be President, I'd probably be laughing even harder at this.

I never thought after his powerpoint in 2003 that I'd say this, but Colin Powell has said exactly the right thing - check out the section between 4:30 and 6:15 of the video embedded at the link.

The short version, paraphrased: "So what if Obama was a Muslim? Would that make him unfit to be a Muslim? Should we tell the 7-year-old Muslim-American kids today that they can't grow up to be President?"

But Powell says it better than that.

Transcript, for the video-phobic (like me). Statement re this is on page 2.

I saw that while eating breakfast Sunday morning. Thought to myself "about time someone said that in public."