So, Obama’s Chief of Staff called some of his colleagues “retarded,” and a bunch of other people got mad, most notably, Ms. Palin. Seems it’s not nice to disparage mentally challenged people, even behind closed doors (I’m not disagreeing). But I have to ask, what do his comments have to do with people with learning disabilities specifically? He wasn’t calling them retarded, he was calling his colleagues retarded (or their actions). What does retarded mean? Just like another word I wrote about recently, it means what we want it to mean.
In the Merriam-Webster online dictionary, I find that the definition of the transitive verb retard can be “to slow up especially by preventing or hindering advance or accomplishment : impede.” And in this sense, I do believe it could be said this is exactly what Mr. Emanuel was trying to convey in his weekly strategy meeting. To quote the Wall Street Journal, he “warned [the group] not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items.” So was he really likening them derisively to people with mental handicap, or was he expressing his opinion that their actions were hindering accomplishment?
I’m going with the latter.
As Ms. Palin should already know, the term “retarded” or “retard” is never used to describe persons with a cognitive impairment. In this day and age it is a slang term that is meant to debase and insult persons who are behaving in a manner defined by Merriam-Webster. In many situations, I think the word “retard” is almost too kind to describe some persons in government positions.
Wouldn’t it be nice if communication could be about the words and what we mean, rather than all the layers of unspoken, unquestioned perceiving. Although those layers lead to Monica’s amazing prose, so maybe they’re not so bad?!