Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Mark Davis says the current political “firestorm” over Rahm Emanuel’s use of the word “retard” is just an overreaction. An excerpt:

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.

… 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.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 2:56 pm and is filed under NOT2BEMISSED, Obama administration, commentary, language, politics. 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.