From the New Zealand Herald:

Special Olympics New Zealand is calling on the nation’s Broadcasting Standards Authority to deem the word “retard” unacceptable after television personality Paul Henry used the word to describe Scottish singer Susan Boyle in a broadcast.

… Henry laughed while reading from a magazine article about how the Britain’s Got Talent singer was starved of oxygen at birth and suffered an intellectual disability.

“Here’s the really interesting revelation: she is in fact retarded …

“And if you look at her carefully, you can make it out,” he said.

Special Olympics New Zealand chairman David Rutherford said using “retard” to describe intellectually disabled people was as hurtful as racial slurs like “nigger” and “kike”.

See also: Media critic says Henry’s jab was a publicity stunt — New Zealand Herald

” … the most worrying thing about TVNZ and Henry is their comments are not a slip of the tongue, but aimed at boosting his brand and appealing to the mean-spirited.”

This entry was posted on Friday, December 4th, 2009 at 4:41 pm and is filed under celebrities, language, media, television. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.