… Ah wuz whittlin’ myself a figurine of Lyndon LaRouche this mornin’ out of a nahce, firm, solid stool I’d passed earlier when a mahty fine chicken mosied on past the porch an’ mah pants went tight all of a sudden …

That’s enough of that nonsense, thank you.

Let’s talk about retards.

Seems a whole bunch of people have been getting a mite tetchy lately about who’s calling who a retard and whether or not calling a person or a bunch of people retards can be considered acceptable in this day and age, this being a day and an age when taking offence at a mere word is guaranteed to generate more in the way of outrage than would an illustrated guide to buggering a chicken sideways with a vibrating fence post.

So, before we denude the English language altogether of those words that make some folks squirt in horror because someone might feel poorly if they’re used, we need to provide some clarity here on precisely how, why and when the word retard makes perfect sense in its application and when it does not.

To describe someone with a genuine intellectual disability, a diagnosed condition or affliction as a retard is not a clever thing to do. And those who are inclined to do so reveal more about their own intellectual corruption and emotional infantilism and inflict more damage to their own reputation (if they’ve got one) and social standing (if they’ve got that) than they would do to the subject or subjects of their slur.

And I feel that you would be perfectly within your rights, if you were the parent or guardian of someone so afflicted, to go forth and seek out the offending party and present them with a thumping good slap upside the head with a meat mallet by way of redress, though far be it for me to encourage random acts of brutal, senseless and satisfying violence, no matter how well justified you might feel they may be.

Yet let us now turn our attention to the appropriate usage of the word retard, and to those individuals to whom it may be most aptly and satisfactorily applied.

These are people who, despite giving every outward impression of being in full possession of their faculties, possess minds that have never been troubled, nor made the slightest acquaintance with, logic, demonstrable facts, historical record, depth of thought, analytic ability or even so much as a lick of common sense.

They dwell not in Candyland as Jacob Weisberg of Slate recently suggested, but rather a dark and ominous netherworld of bottomless conspiracy and paranoia, fuelled by hatred and fear, hounded by demons with pins in their heads whose only desire is to hunt them down, rob them of their freedoms, take their guns, piss on their bibles and probe the tender recesses of their children’s pink bits with monstrous black erections that have been tattooed all over with swastikas and sickles and Save the Whales slogans.

Their thought processes are so hampered, hindered, held back, impeded, limited in scope and just plain round-the-bend batshit crazy borderline psychotic that any reasonably intelligent person attempting some form of communication with these people is at risk of blowing up his or her own head.

They are, therefore, indisputably retards.

As Dan Kervick noted recently on The Washington Note, “If the previous generations of Americans had been captivated by the same radical libertarian philosophies that infect the current generation of dumbed-down, pseudo-educated, addicted and desperately lost imbeciles that make up much of the American public, we would never have built most of our dams, or our highways, or our schools.”

So, without further ado, let us now meet some retards, people whose every public utterance and action appears to indicate that they have been mightily entertained throughout their lives by playing with their own poo.

First up, from the state that gave us the good ol’ boy hisself, home of the original one-tooth, fartin’ farm animal fucker, here’s Don McLeroy of the Texas State Board of Education …

“Evolution is hooey … The secular humanists may argue that we are a secular nation … But we are a Christian nation founded on Christian principles. The way I evaluate history textbooks is first I see how they cover Christianity and Israel. Then I see how they treat Ronald Reagan — he needs to get credit for saving the world from communism and for the good economy over the last twenty years because he lowered taxes.”

Don goes on to say, “Our science standards are light years ahead of any other state when it comes to challenging evolution!”

Wubbidywubbidywubbidywub.

The Texans have been banging on about the evils of education for years, it seems. In 1994, “Texans for Governmental Integrity, sent out glossy flyers suggesting that one Democratic incumbent — a retired Methodist schoolteacher and grandmother of five was a pawn of the “radical homosexual lobby” who wanted to push steroids and alcohol on children and advocated in-class demonstrations on “how to masturbate and how to get an abortion!”

Now, nobody taught me how to masturbate when I was an adolescent, it’s something I figured out all by my little old ownsome … “Hello, hello, hello, I wonder what happens if I do this?”

And, lo, yea verily, did the joys of toying with one’s own schmekel gradually reveal themselves to me and thus did I toil at my schmekel for quite some time until I met a girl with a Siouxsie Sioux hairstyle in the late 1970’s who relieved me of my blister-ridden burden and toyed with my schmekel on my behalf. For which I was most grateful, thank you Jesus.

And so, I am of a mind to believe that anyone who thinks an adolescent needs to be “taught” how to masturbate is, indubitably, a retard.

Moving on, let us now make our acquaintance with Teapot Tea Party member, Mrs. Stout …

“Worried about hyperinflation, social unrest or even martial law, she and her Tea Party members joined a coalition, Friends for Liberty, that includes representatives from Glenn Beck’s 9/12 Project, the John Birch Society, and Oath Keepers, a new player in a resurgent militia movement … Mrs. Stout said she has begun to contemplate the possibility of “another civil war.” It is her deepest fear, she said. Yet she believes the stakes are that high. Basic freedoms are threatened, she said. Economic collapse, food shortages and civil unrest all seem imminent … “I don’t see us being the ones to start it, but I would give up my life for my country,” Mrs. Stout said. She paused, considering her next words. “Peaceful means,” she continued, “are the best way of going about it. But sometimes you are not given a choice.”

Mrs. Stout is a member of a growing number of lunatic retards who labour under the fevered delusion that, “the Army is seeking “Internment/Resettlement” specialists”, that “Mr. Obama is trying to convert Interpol, the international police organization, into his personal police force” and that “Mr. Obama is using a strategy of manufactured crisis to destroy the economy and pave the way for dictatorship”.

In Indiana, for example, “Richard Behney, a Republican Senate candidate, told Tea Party supporters what he would do if the 2010 elections did not produce results to his liking: “I’m cleaning my guns and getting ready for the big show. And I’m serious about that, and I bet you are, too.””

Retards, yes?

But I’ve saved the best for last, for here, courtesy of John Avlon, former Republican speechwriter for Rudy Giuliani and author of “Wingnuts”, are the Retard Royales, their grey matter all withered pickle and mouldy cheese, sitting within a balding skull-bun of unquestionable dumb.

Meet Orange County’s Wiley Drake, and Arizona’s Steven L. Anderson …

Drake – “I’m known as a birther, you know. I don’t believe Obama was born in this country. He’s an illegal alien and so forth … And so I began to pray what the Bible teaches us to pray and that is imprecatory prayer. An imprecatory prayer is very strong. Imprecatory prayer in Psalms 109, for example, says if you have an evil leader above you, you pray that Satan will stand by his side and you ask God to make his children fatherless and his wife a widow and that his time in office be short… Other Psalms say when they speak evil, God will break out their teeth and when they run to do destruction God will break their legs.”

Anderson of the Faithful Word Baptist Church – “I hate Barack Obama. You say, well, you just mean you don’t like what he stands for. No, I hate the person. Oh, you mean you just don’t like his policies. No, I hate him … I am not going to pray for his good. I am going to pray that he dies and goes to Hell.” …… “Break his teeth, oh God, in his mouth, as a snail which melteth, let him pass away, like an untimely birth of a woman—that he thinks—he calls it a woman’s right to choose, you know, he thinks it’s so wonderful, he ought to be aborted. It ought to be, ‘Abort Obama,’ that ought to be the motto.”

Onward KKKristian soldiers.

How’s your head? Still in one piece, I hope.

In cases such as these, the word retard seems so sadly inadequate. So we need a new word, and for the life of me, I can’t think of one. The language has its limits and so do I.

But I am open to suggestions, and so I shall leave it there and turn proceedings over to the readership (if we have any).

For ah have some whittlin’ to finish up on, and ah jes’ saw that chubby fella from the Ahce Cream Parly a-wander on by, goin’ down the fishin’ hole I reckons, and mah pants got tight agin.

Soooooooooooo-EEEEE!

Reckon I maht go down that fishin’ hole myself and make that boy squeal like a pig.

How’s mah tooth look?