{"id":2024,"date":"2008-08-12T20:31:17","date_gmt":"2008-08-12T20:31:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2024"},"modified":"2008-08-12T20:31:17","modified_gmt":"2008-08-12T20:31:17","slug":"namecalling","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2024","title":{"rendered":"Name-Calling"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A coalition of disability organizations is organizing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2008\/08\/11\/movies\/11thun.html?_r=1&#038;ref=todayspaper&amp;oref=slogin\">a boycott of the film <i>Tropical Thunder<\/i><\/a>. They object to the film&#8217;s frequent use of the word &#8220;retard&#8221;. By default, I tend to be suspicious of any film boycott, whatever the motivation. In this case, I agree that &#8220;retard&#8221; is an ugly word, but it seems inconsistent to single out this movie when shows like <i>South Park<\/i> and even <i>The Daily Show<\/i> use it just as liberally. <\/p>\n<p>The boycott&#8217;s organizers make the argument that &#8220;retard&#8221; is just as offensive as racial epithets. But I&#8217;m not sure the comparison is justified. Racial epithets have long histories of derogatory use. But even today, &#8220;retarded&#8221; is a common descriptor of people with cognitive disabilities in some medical and social service circles. There isn&#8217;t much distance between &#8220;retarded&#8221; and &#8220;retard&#8221;. The organizers might consider giving equal scorn to the medical professionals and bureaucrats who continue to perpetuate the word&#8217;s use in polite society. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A coalition of disability organizations is organizing a boycott of the film Tropical Thunder. They object to the film&#8217;s frequent use of the word &#8220;retard&#8221;. By default, I tend to be suspicious of any film boycott, whatever the motivation. In this case, I agree that &#8220;retard&#8221; is an ugly word, but it seems inconsistent to <a href='https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=2024' class='excerpt-more'>[&#8230;]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2024","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-wE","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2024"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2024\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2024"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2024"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2024"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}