… 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.

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