Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg says the word “retarded” may have started out as a clinical term, but it has been twisted into a taunt over the past half century and should be put to rest.

Were developmentally disabled people secure in the mainstream alongside the Irish and accountants, we could happily debate the cultural desirability of mocking them. But given that recognizing their full humanity is a fairly recent development, it seems that we should at least acknowledge that ridicule, though funny in entertainment, is destructive on a personal level.

…In 1953, Dale Evans, wife of cowboy star Roy Rogers, penned a book, Angel Unaware, about their daughter Robin, who was born with Down syndrome. Doctors told her to have Robin institutionalized. Instead Evans, inspired by her deep Christian faith, posed the little girl in family publicity photos. The book sold 400,000 copies in the mid-1950s, and parents who otherwise never let their children out of the house felt comfortable bringing them to Roy Rogers rodeos, because of his wife’s book.

They felt safe there.

I believe that any person with a heart, facing this complex issue, would rather err on the side of those children, would want them, not merely to get out of the house to see a cowboy show, but to also go to school with other kids and work at a job, if they could, still safe and accepted, without their lives being made a hell by would-be wits looking for someone to abuse.

Lennard Davis, writing at Huffingtonpost.com about the flap over “Family Guy,” says Sarah Palin misrepresented the show’s meaning in an effort to “attack the left in any form.” Far from being a slight on people with disabilities, Davis said, the episode “serves to show us that we can’t and shouldn’t underestimate people with Down syndrome.” An excerpt:

Tellingly, she didn’t mind Rush Limbaugh use the R-word, saying is was just “satire.” Satire? What is Family Guy? Greek tragedy?

The moral of this story isn’t that Family Guy is an insensitive show; it’s that Palin is using Trig as a hostage to shield her from the shoot-out of the last election. With Trig in tow she’s not the incompetent former governor of Alaska or the incendiary anti-wonk, she is simply the good Mom protecting her child and all people with disabilities.

If Palin really cared about people with disabilities, she would be supporting health care legislation and stronger enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But then that would be more of that “hopey changey” stuff she ridicules.

Lennard Davis is professor of English, disability studies, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

(Photo from www.lennarddavis.com)

Writing on CNN.com, San Diego Union editorial board member Ruben Navarrette Jr. says the ‘Family Guy’ dig at Sarah Palin was just about as funny as “showing President Clinton, one of their icons, having a heart attack.” It’s not funny, he said, because Trig Palin “already has a hard life in store — filled with intolerance, prejudice and limitations imposed by others.”

An excerpt:

Wanna take Palin down a peg? Fine. But don’t use her child to do it — especially this child.

Arthur Caplan, writing at MSNBC.com, reacts to a report by the Associated Press that genetic testing is leading to the birth of fewer and fewer children with Down syndrome and other genetic diseases in the United States. An excerpt:

On a trip to Ireland a few years ago, I was struck by a number of faces among the crowds. They were children with the tell-tale look of Down syndrome.

What struck me was the realization that I hardly ever see these young faces out on the street in the United States.

… Reducing the burden of disease is obviously a good thing. But genetic testing of parents, and, as is now happening with increasing frequency, embryos, raises some difficult ethical challenges as well.

… As some families with a Down syndrome child have noted, fewer kids with Down may mean fewer public programs, fewer resources in schools and for housing and less political clout. If some genetic diseases begin to fade away, will society’s willingness to provide support for the diminishing numbers of those born with such diseases fade as well? And are we headed to a time when parents who choose not to be genetically tested find themselves condemned as morally irresponsible parents?

Caplan is director of the Center for Bioethics at the University of Pennsylvania.

Cailley Hammel, writing in the University of Wisconsin’s student newspaper, applauds Fox’s “Family Guy” for hiring an actress with Down syndrome to play a character with Down syndrome. The casting of Andrea Fay Friedman (left) in the role is evidence that the show “handled the Down syndrome plotline with surprising sensitivity,” Hammel writes. An excerpt:

… Knowing that [producer Seth] McFarland [sic] chose to be authentic in his casting decision as opposed to having a regular cast member read her lines is indicative of a layer of respect most people probably didn’t know he had. I sure didn’t.

While Sarah Palin may feel like she got a “kick in the gut” because of “Family Guy,” she’s just a maverick that needs to cool her jets a little. Taking the joke in the context of the episode as a whole, she should consider how a character with Down syndrome – someone from a marginalized group of people – was brought to primetime TV and treated on a level plane as her peers. And for someone like Palin, who considers herself a champion of the special needs community, she should really consider how important of a milestone that is.

(Photo from DSIAM.org)

Salon.com’s Mary Elizabeth Williams watches the “Family Guy” episode that drew criticism from Sarah Palin and daughter Bristol, and finds that she agrees with them. An excerpt:

I’ve got to hand it to them — when the Palin women are right, they’re right. The “Family Guy” episode wasn’t just a bomb because of the low blow at Palin (seriously, doesn’t the woman give us enough to legitimately criticize her for?), but for the overall insensitivity — and, just as egregiously, the witlessness — of the whole plotline. There’s no topic in the world off-limits — even in comedy. Nay, especially in comedy. But contrast the way “Glee” skillfully handled a Down syndrome story last fall with baby Stewie’s observation of Ellen’s eyes: “The spacing seems a tad off, but yeah, individually they’re not awful.” (There’s also a musical number featuring Stewie referring to the “special Down syndrome girl” as “that little whore.”) In the end, of course, Ellen turns out to be as big a creep as any of the regular kids. Ooh, progressive!

We get that it’s “Family Guy’s” job to be all shocking and taboo breaking. But maybe they can stick to picking on targets their own size instead of mocking the disabled. Because I don’t want to have to find myself agreeing with Sarah Palin again for a long time.

Maureen O’Connor at Gawker.com reluctantly seconds that emotion. An excerpt:

I mostly agree with Sarah and Bristol. Which, in turn, outrages me because I don’t like agreeing with them. But comedic mimicry of retarded people is obnoxious. Even when it’s self-aware, it’s painful to watch able-minded adults ape at buffoonish caricatures of the mentally disabled-it feels too much like playground taunts from the fourth grade.

Ellen Seidman, writing at Huffingtonpost.com, says Sarah Palin’s criticism a recent episode of ‘Family Guy’ is “completely misguided.” Seidman, whose son has cerebral palsy, says she applauds what she views as the show’s message — that people with disabilities are people just like everyone else. An excerpt:

I work so hard to spread that message every single day of my son’s life. It is an endless, Sisyphean labor of love. To be sure, I would not enjoy it if someone called Max an asshole, but hey, at least they’d be engaging with him instead of just gaping. At least they’d be treating him like a typical person instead of like a freak show.

Sarah, the genius of this episode is that it made a girl with Down syndrome seem like just another feisty teenager with ‘tude. It also gave people in this country a way to get the conversation going about people with disabilities.

… Really, you should be grateful to “The Family Guy” — for tackling a taboo topic with relatable humor and smarts; for holding a funhouse mirror up to the public so they can recognize their shortcomings in their dealings with people who are handicapped; and for being real.