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Something that has happened (not hypothetical)

ComoxCorn said:
I thought they worked for the lobbiests. I'll be darned.:sidestep:
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They DO work for the lobbyists. This has been going on since the 1980s IMHO, when campaigning became so expensive that only politicians with huge lobbyist donations could afford to run for election.
 
I think that there are some "insults" that have obviously hateful, disgusting and malicious intent, and some "insults" that are just words. I think everyone needs to figure out for themselves which they find truly offensive and which they just feel like they can start an argument or debate over.

For example, I think you'll find that in a generally civilized society with varying personalities, opinions, social and economic stauses, and myriad other differences, just about any racial slur will be seen as hateful, maliscious, and disgusting.

Within the same group of individuals, you'll likely find a variety of opinions as to the offensive-ness of insults based on other criteria such as gender or intelligence.

I think it speaks volumes of the varying amounts of sensitivy that can be displayed in humans. A person can take offense to an insult like "retarded", but that same person may not be the least bit offended by an insult based on gender or sexuality, or some other criteria. Amazing creatures, humans are.

What find truly offensive is the ability of some people to deliberately and willfully attempt to impose their own personal moral standards on everyone.
 
tyflier said:
I think that there are some "insults" that have obviously hateful, disgusting and malicious intent, and some "insults" that are just words. I think everyone needs to figure out for themselves which they find truly offensive and which they just feel like they can start an argument or debate over.
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My personal standard is if it is an insult based on a characteristic that IMHO is not within the person's control, such as race, national origin (they didn't pick where to be born or who their parents were), IQ (babies don't choose to have developmental delay), gender (we don't get to pick which type of plumbing we are born with), health issues (nobody chooses to be a paraplegic!) and so on, it's inappropriate. My own personal value includes that no one ~chooses~ to be gay so that's not approriate as insult material either.

Things we choose to be, such as what employment we intentionally seek out, are fair game (did anyone accidentally run for political office?). YMMV.
 
And to think the other Obama thread was facing impending doom ;)...Obviously what Emmanuel said was in poor taste, but not because of it's impact on those living with mental disabilities. It's apparent to me that if people were truly offended than they wouldn't have waited this long to demand justice...If they truly cared it would shine through in their words..Maybe I'm missing something, but to me it sounds like the same old song and dance...
 
Should he be fired? Not for me to decide.

Is the word R-word inappropriate to be used? Yes, definitely, without question and I hate PC speak, with a passion. This is beyond PC. It's as inappropriate as the N-word or any homosexual epitaph you can think of. Any of you that rationalize, condone, or justify its usage are part of the problem. :eek1:

http://www.r-word.org/


D80
 
I'm taking no sides here because I'm as guilty as the next guy of using the "R" word to give my friends a hard time or as an insult to the guy driving next to me, but I do want to make one observation I'm seeing here.

For the most part it sounds like the people who have responded in this thread have said that its ok that he used the word to describe a group of people and that Palin is just exploding over nothing. I wonder what would happen if he had made the same comment but told them to stop acting like a bunch of n*****s? It's the same concept as both groups would be offended if you called them the word to their face, but because it was used to a group of people not included in the slur its ok? I just want to get my facts straight here so I know if I can call some of my white friends on here the n word if I feel like it (which I won't as I despise what the words stands for). There IS a double standard being held here in my eyes. I don't know which is right or which is wrong, but it seems to me that justice only favors those who are powerful enough to take it firmly (blacks v. mentally challenged).
 
Drizzt80 said:
Should he be fired? Not for me to decide.

Is the word R-word inappropriate to be used? Yes, definitely, without question and I hate PC speak, with a passion. This is beyond PC. It's as inappropriate as the N-word or any homosexual epitaph you can think of. Any of you that rationalize, condone, or justify its usage are part of the problem. :eek1:

http://www.r-word.org/


D80
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Ok, then let me axe you dis, how come a black person can call another black person a word starting with an N that if I called that same black person, or even just spelled out here, would get me in trouble?

They're words. Properly used, applied to that chink, oops, can I say THAT, in your armor, they can not only be painful, but make you say and do things. Things that maybe, just maybe, the saying was intended to make you do. Words, while they can hurt, don't have to IF you have enough confidence in yourself to realize that no matter what ANYONE says to or about you, it means nothing until you let it.

Let me tell you a story, which is true.

A friend of mine, a guy I've known for longer than most of you have been alive, used to work in a group home for developmentally disabled adults. He was a live-in caretaker. I owned a pet store at the time and they would occasionally come in and see the stuff.

There was also a really good little dive restaurant in the same center that I ate at, they ate at, a lot of people at ate because the food was good, the service was great, and the owner and his family were just nice people.

One night some kids, 4 or 5 or maybe 6 of them, highschoolers if I recall, really lit into the DD guys who were eating there. The DDs ate there ate least once a day, we all knew them. So, these kids, fine upstanding youths that they were, decided it would be fun to pick on the DDs. I wasn't there to see it happen but I was in on the vengence.

My friend and I were told about this by one of the kids who worked for me. I'm not a little guy, though my friend is. Not that it matters. And there is a point which I will get to right quick like.

So, we're told a bunch of dumbass kids are picking on the DDs ( I just don't want to spell out developmentally disabled everytime I refer to them) and really being mean. We did not appreciate that. We took a walk over to the diner and had a seat, sort of stealthy like, and watched. Sure enough, one of them started spouting off again.

Long story short, we gave the mentally non-deficient kids a choice. Make me, a rather large man and my somewhat smaller friend really angry or apologize to the DDs and not to ever let us even hear a rumor of them treating them that way again. I was not nice, my friend was not nice, the kids were pretty scared.

They apologized, the way kids will, without a bit of sincerity. We asked them if that was the best they could do and informed them that they REALLY should think before they answered. One of the smarter normal ones caught on and they did then, in person and one by one, say they were sorry for being such jerks. I suspect that lesson stayed with them.

The point. I am not as uncaring as you might suspect. I do usually have some good reason, to me, for what I say. IF you make assumptions, you may well be wrong. Using words to hurt someone who can take care of themselves, who can hurt you back, who can take it and dish it out, I have no problem with. But, doing so to those who simply can't defend themselves is not cool, it is in fact so uncool that I may just take action myself to make things right.

So, why is saying something, not someone, is retarded equated to calling someone that word that only a black person can get away with calling another black person? Are blacks somehow less than other coloured people? Are they better? Why the double standard and WHY why why, is that the ONLY word people ever compare words like RETARDED to?
 
KJUN said:
What if she WOULD have said Obama wasn't acting niggardly enough? http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/niggardly

That would be OK, right? ...because maybe she didn't MEAN it as an insult. I mean, she (hypothetically) wouldn't be talking about the race of a person, right????


I'm sure if we all used the word "niggardly" and "retarded" commonly in public to describe other at our job places - even if we used them appropriately and not in an insulting manner - MANY of us would be told to stop in very strong terms.

THAT is my thoughts on the use of "retarded." It was inappropriate and it SHOWS how members of this administration care about the feelings of the American public: they don't.




....and for the record, I don't actually, personally, use "niggardly" since I know it would offend many people unnecessarily. It's called being a polite member of a diverse society. This was just a relevant example to show the weakness of an argument defending the term "retarded" in this particular situation.
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Wow, KJ, I wasn't even aware niggardly was a word. I think I'd have to look it up if I ever heard someone say it in public before I could be offended. Anyways, it's a completely different ballpark. Rahm said something dumb, that he should've thought twice about, but he didn't direct at a specific person or people, he directed it at some ideas. Idea don't have feelings. If Palin said something similar to what the Majority Leader said about Obama's race, which is a specific thing about a specific person, she'd be rightly torn apart, just as he was. But Rahm, a normally vulgar man, saying something vulgar and in poor taste, is not worth being fired over.
wstphal said:
Yes. I know several parents of young adults who are DD & they HATE that word! Even when it's applied to "those retarded Republicans" or "those Democratic retards".

I ~think~ this is because schoolkids so often use "retard" as an all purpose schoolyard insult. I heard that one many times as a kid, directed at socially unacceptable kids or occasionally at DD kids. So the parents get sensitive either because it's happened to their children or because they fear it will happen to their children.
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Kids in my elementary and middle school used retard all the time as an insult... but never to the special ed kids. We don't even refer to them as "retards", they are just special ed. I'd like to add that we eventually stopped using that word as an insult, mainly because it was a childish insult compared to other at our arsenal at that age.
requin said:
I agree very much with this. I worked with adults who had developmental disabilities for two years and one of the very first things they told us in training was that if you accidentally say something like "that's retarded" you shouldn't make a big deal out of it. They said it was actually more upsetting to the clients if we made a scene apologizing for it, because it brought more attention to the fact that they are different. In my experience, people with these types of disabilities really appreciate it when you talk to them just like you would talk to anybody else. The two women I worked most with would get upset if they felt that people were talking down to them, and I heard several people in the program make jokes about it.

Now, I wouldn't go around calling stuff "retarded" in general, because I do think it can be offensive and obviously some people are more sensitive than others. I definitely don't think it's acceptable as a direct insult either, but sometimes I think people just like to get offended on behalf of other people. I know Sarah Palin has a DD son, and I can understand why parents who have children with disabilities would want to protect them, but to me this is a pretty obvious ploy for attention on Palin's part.
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Agreed. Especially from a woman who's been quoted joking about Trig being her retarded baby, I find this an insincere outrage.
 
wilomn said:
So, why is saying something, not someone, is retarded equated to calling someone that word that only a black person can get away with calling another black person? Are blacks somehow less than other coloured people? Are they better? Why the double standard and WHY why why, is that the ONLY word people ever compare words like RETARDED to?
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To answer your last and more obvious question first, people use that equation because it is probably the most socially understood verbal taboo in American culture today. I doubt as many people know the word "gook" or any other racial as much as the more charged "n" word. I think we actually had this discussion in a thread not too long ago. Next, where did the "are blacks less or better" question come from? I don't think their place in society was ever something that factored into the equation of the n-word examples being used. And finally, would it make any difference if I called a black car the n-word if a black person was next to me on the street and I explained I was describing the car's color, not a black person? My guess would be absolutely not. I'd probably have a serious argument on my hands and one that I'm still ultimately wrong for using even if I was using it unprovokingly. My point, and I believe the point of others, is that there IS a definite double standard that even somebody as infinitely old and smart as you are, are overlooking.
 
All I'm trying to do here is provoke thought. To be completely honest I'm one of those people who thinks that political correctedness could quite possibly be one of the stupidest things to ever creep into our society. They're words, deal with them.
 
Unlike some people in this thread, I will choose to voice my opinion as that, rather than insist that my opinion is the only proper way to view this situation....

Those of you that are insistant that everyone else "toe the line" and adhere and subscribe to your own personal values are not just part of the problem...you're most of the problem...

They are words. You can only be offended if you let them offend you. Is it wise to run around calling people derogatory names? Probably not a good idea. But it's just as bad of an idea to run around being offended by every word you disagree with.

There are words that I choose not to use because my personal values don't allow it. That list of words is likely shorter than many of your lists, longer than a few lists, and without a doubt different than the majority of your lists. My list is no better nor worse, more or less intelligent, or in any way shape or form either superior or inferior to your own personal lists. They are just words.

Of course it is in bad taste to use most these words in mixed company. Most children could tell you that. But is it really something worth getting up in arms over?
 
@ Ricky87 -- I only heard about this today so I can only comment on Mr Emanuel's remark as of the time I learned of it.

@wilomn -- I used the "n word" example because it is the word that is most commonly considered a taboo insult in the USA so I figured most readers would "get it".

@tyflier -- I think I too labelled my last post as my opinion. I think there are standards that should be generally held, but that's IMHO too. LOL
 
tyflier said:
Unlike some people in this thread, I will choose to voice my opinion as that, rather than insist that my opinion is the only proper way to view this situation....

Those of you that are insistant that everyone else "toe the line" and adhere and subscribe to your own personal values are not just part of the problem...you're most of the problem...

They are words. You can only be offended if you let them offend you. Is it wise to run around calling people derogatory names? Probably not a good idea. But it's just as bad of an idea to run around being offended by every word you disagree with.

There are words that I choose not to use because my personal values don't allow it. That list of words is likely shorter than many of your lists, longer than a few lists, and without a doubt different than the majority of your lists. My list is no better nor worse, more or less intelligent, or in any way shape or form either superior or inferior to your own personal lists. They are just words.

Of course it is in bad taste to use most these words in mixed company. Most children could tell you that. But is it really something worth getting up in arms over?
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THE HYPOCRISY! IT BURRNNNNNSSS!
 
Dear Sarah Palin:

Welcome to the world! It's not a polite place. It's full of these nasty dirty things called "individuals" and (generic) you are not the center of it. Feel free now to whine.



Political correctness has gone mad (uh oh, is that insulting to the mentally unstable?) and taken over in everything. Ours is now a culture of people who *love* to be victims. Can't wait to be victims. Actively look for things to make them feel "victimized". Oh! Those nasty Christians! Oh! Those nasty Atheists! Oh those nasty republicans/democrats/liberals/conservatives/feminists/environmentalists/corporations. We are emotionally fragile, and lawsuit loving. And dang it, what we need is to friggin' grow up and deal with things that are more important than a moment poor word choice.
 
WOW, appalled by all the references, analogies, comparisons, etc...First off, comparing 'blacks' (as you say) to people with mental handicaps in and of itself is not well taken, nor are the justifications of the 'n' word..Turmoil you create internally of a said word is your problem until you come across those who it offends. All this pretension, and political correctness has taken this discussion on a path of no return..Emmanuel was wrong for what he said, but at least he had the gall to apologize. For good or bad, he attempted to make amends, and now it's on those offended to accept or reject. It doesn't open up the Pandora's Box on offensive language, or give anybody else a right to say something equally as ignorant..The history and cultural relevance of the 'n' word is totally separate and requires an open mind to discuss..Otherwise it just becomes a group of people speaking on a subject they wish they understood, but to the deepest capacity do not!
 
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