Spread the Word to End the Word

Today (3/6) is Spread the Word to End the Word day, please check out the r-word site for more information. Please think twice before using the word "retard" or "retarded" in a derogatory way, and please don't allow your children to use it either. I know most people use it more or less thoughtlessly, and probably most would never say anything else disparaging about someone with a disability, but IT STILL HURTS. A LOT. It hurts me, it will hurt my son and his brother when they are old enough to hear it and understand how it's being used.

November 6, Part One - Dis-encouraged and Dis-articulate

[ The "dis-encouraged" is included as a tribute to Nurse Lucy, someone I worked with at an earlier job. She regularly consulted me about spelling matters 
(hand-written progress notes at that time); in one note she used "disencouraged" 
and I gently suggested that "discouraged" might be better. Hi, Lucy. 

I know the opposite of the adjective articulate is inarticulate, not disarticulate. 
Disarticulate means "to become disjointed," which I think is appropriate to this content. Also I'm mostly familiar with it being used to describe someone cutting off fingers, arms, etc. of a person. 

This may be a good indication of my mood :) 

but also describes what I nearly did while pruning our hedges this weekend, so I'll use it. ]

Random … something

1. Trick-or-Treating the other night – after the “retarded” comment (see previous post) bummed me out for awhile, we had a pretty nice time. The main celebration: David got to walk a little bit! Last year we were nowhere near this point, so it was awesome. I was actually a little relieved when he sat down in protest, because he’s so short (even in a group of kids) I was worried he’d get stepped on.

              

(Keep reading)

(No, I haven't actually sent this yet. Too scared)

Dear Ms. Coulter,

“Because that would look retarded.”

These are among the first words I overheard after my little family and I arrived at a church-sponsored pizza party last night, for a pre-trick-or-treat supper. There were two teenage girls dressed in matching costumes, and one was ready to start getting candy while the other wanted to stay at the church a while longer. The first protested that she couldn’t go by herself because “that would look retarded,” without both halves of the matching outfits.

This is what I heard when she said it: “I can’t go out as one half of this pair, because that would be as stupid or stupider than something someone with an IQ below 70 would do.” Did I mention this happened as I was walking out of the church ahead of them, with my 2-year-old son David, who has Down syndrome, in my arms?

What I heard in your tweet is that President Obama's policies (and possibly the man himself) are so inane, so insipid, so worthless, that they are as bad or worse than those a mentally retarded person would come up with.

These teenage girls are probably what you were talking about last week in your interview with Piers Morgan last Friday, right? Giving these young ladies the benefit of the doubt, I will assume they were not (nor likely would they ever) purposefully saying something hurtful to a small child with a developmental disability. They were just being … teenage girls? Whose mother never told them when they were much younger, “don’t call someone retarded because it’s mean,” as mine did?

My Own Open Letter – but this one’s to Piers Morgan

Dear Mr. Morgan,

I wanted to thank you for hosting Ann Coulter on your program this past Friday evening, as well as John Franklin Stephens and Tim Shriver, concerning Ms. Coulter’s recent use of the “r-word” in a tweet about President Obama. I had been thinking and worrying and writing about this issue all last week, and it was helpful to hear four new perspectives.

Ms. Coulter appeared to become irritated, even agitated, when she thought you presumed to know what she was thinking when she used the r-word in the tweet. So I will not attempt to do the same thing, to read her mind, but based on what I know of Ms. Coulter’s work and the way she describes herself, I think your assumption that she knew exactly how provocative she was being by choosing that word, is likely reasonable.

I have considered writing Ms. Coulter, and I may still do so, but my concern is that I would put forth considerable effort to be balanced, fair, and gracious (i.e., not expressing exactly how angry I am about this) only to have my efforts ignored, or even ridiculed on Fox News. I thought about telling her about my son David, who is 2 ½ years old and has Down syndrome, or even attach a photo, but given her reactions to your questions I am hesitant to give her any information about my family, or to send her a photo of my beautiful son only to have it appear on TV along with an angry rant about how unreasonable I, and others like me, are to find her use of the word “retard” offensive. My son is too young to understand anything about this right now, but seeing his face on television along with anything but an apology would be more than his father and I could bear.

You didn't really think I was done, did you?

(See post/e-mail above)

(Even I am kind of sick of thinking about this, so I think I will take a break)

In case you don't know anything about this:

http://piersmorgan.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/26/john-franklin-stephens-on-his-open-letter-to-ann-coulter-use-me-as-a-symbol-of-adversity/

for the interview with JF Stephens and Tim Shriver

http://politicalticker.blogs.cnn.com/2012/10/27/coulter-stands-by-use-of-controversial-word-to-describe-obama/?hpt=hp_t2

for the interview with Ann Coulter

Matt and I have actually not talked about this a lot, mostly because we’ve been really busy over the past week with work and church and childcare. But we did discuss it a little yesterday, and raised the following points:

1. I had really hoped the phrase “politically correct” had died a natural death several years ago, but it appears to have been resurrected. To me, to gripe about some new term and label it the politically correct term, is to (1) completely dismiss the issue, (2) give a reason to never expand your mind or consider that there might be a way of speaking that is better or preferable to the way we’ve always said it, and (3) expect carte blanche to say whatever you want, without ever thinking about it.

On Guard

Today I drove to Greenville SC for a continuing ed training. How long does it take to get to Greenville from where we live? Exactly enough time to listen to the Green Day CD American Idiot two and a half times. The first half includes the song "Dearly Beloved," which I'm sure I have noticed before contains the line, "oh therapy/can you please fill the void?/am I retarded or am I just overjoyed?" so I got to hear that one 3 times. Perhaps I have always sort of actively ignored it, but I'm a bit touchy after the church thing yesterday. Eh. Yuck.

Oh, and: http://www.r-word.org/

Giving the band the benefit of the doubt, I tried reviewing all the lyrics to see if there is possibly an appropriate context. But it's a concept album, so who has time to try to sort that out, and since when is a Green Day song about anything, really?

Why did I force myself to listen to it 3 times? The drive was stressful (lots of turns and road-numbers-not-names) and I have a really silly CD player in my car that requires this extra step to take anything out, and I was already managing a cup of coffee in addition to Mapquest directions, and it was dark (6:00 a.m.) Etc., etc.

So I listened to Beck's Guero on the way back. I think that one's clear; even when he slips into Spanish I happen to know the Spanish word is retraso, FYI.

Eh.

Had to call out a kid at church today for saying something was "so retarded." A somewhat young kid. Sigh. I'm still not quite sure of the best way to handle it, and sometimes wonder if it's of any use whatsoever. But there is a definite funny feeling in the stomach area when I hear it. Yuck.