Journalists Clueless About Disability Bias

 

This letter was published in The New York Post on Wednesday February 10, 2010.

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/letters/rahm_rude_outburst_not_laughing_FIzLkE9KHnRBIduMgLsAlL 

EPA Rahm Emanuel

 

Kyle Smith misses the point of offensive words regarding disabilities. (Kyle Smith, "Political correctness gone mad,"New York Post, February 7, 2010)They are acceptable in polite society as he indicates. He says the n-word is "the most inflammatory slur" but finds disability slurs are "jokey." Huh? Persons with disabilities are slurred every day whenever a journalist uses "a history of mental illness in reports of crime. That suggests that all people with disabilities are violent and dangerous. It has become a truth under the Goebbels rule. Today defense attorneys use allegations of mental illness as a defense to crime. Smith reveals his and his colleagues' lack of awareness about disabilities. Why only after a national political figure objects do journalists notice?

"Wait a minute: the N-word is the single most inflammatory slur in America. It’s been banned from polite society. Its purpose is to denigrate. 'Retarded' as jokey slang for 'stupid' is used all the time by thoughtful people who aren’t trying to offend anyone and aren’t referring to 'children with cognitive and developmental disabilities.' The two words don’t compare. [. . .]

Thurmond’s campaign was racist, and believing that several more decades of racial segregation would have alleviated 'all these problems' was racist too."

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/political_correctness_gone_mad_o1bAGriUZut0LrR24qXphN

Political correctness gone mad

New York Post

Last Updated: 11:42 AM, February 7, 2010

Posted: 12:50 AM, February 7, 2010

Rahm Emanuel is facing a political correctness crisis, and as a noted American once said, we should never let a crisis go to waste.<p> </p><br> White House Chief of Staff Emanuel said (correctly, on substance) that for liberal bloggers to attack centrist Democratic senators for being too moderate on health care would be “f - - - ing retarded,” meaning politically unwise, then found himself getting a wedgie from Sarah Palin.<p> </p><br> On Facebook, Palin, the mother of a child who has Down syndrome, presented herself as deeply offended by the implication that . . . what, exactly? That the liberal bloggers Emanuel was speaking to (in a private, off-the-record meeting) were acting as if they had Down syndrome? Surely the more mean-spirited insult would be to accuse those with Down syndrome of behaving as senselessly as lefty bloggers.<p> </p><br> Emanuel did use “retarded” as a pejorative term — never mind that “retarded” originated as a euphemism, an attempt to refer gently to an unpleasant fact. Those who are now known as developmentally challenged and were once referred to as retarded were, before that, known as idiots, morons or imbeciles. Would Palin have been upset if Emanuel had called the bloggers “f’ - - - ing imbeciles”? Emanuel wasn’t seeking to increase the suffering of those with genetic disorders, and Palin knows it. She is pretending to be offended for political gain. “Just as we’d be appalled if any public figure of Rahm’s stature ever used the ‘N-word’ or other such inappropriate language,” Palin wrote on Facebook, “Rahm’s slur on all God’s children with cognitive and developmental disabilities — and the people who love them — is unacceptable, and it’s heartbreaking.”<p> </p><br> Wait a minute: the N-word is the single most inflammatory slur in America. It’s been banned from polite society. Its purpose is to denigrate. “Retarded” as jokey slang for “stupid” is used all the time by thoughtful people who aren’t trying to offend anyone and aren’t referring to “children with cognitive and developmental disabilities.” The two words don’t compare.<p> </p><br> PC sharpshooting has taken down so many conservatives over the years that I can understand Palin’s glee at finding Emanuel in her crosshairs. If Republican X should be fired for making an insensitive remark, so should Democrat Y, right?<p> </p><br> Wrong. Neither should be fired, and Emanuel’s comment should be put in the bank and used as a defense against fake outrage the next time a Republican says something that somebody pretends to be offended by (but is secretly delighted to hear).<p> </p><br> Let’s distinguish poor word choice from having severely bad ideas. Harry Reid said that President Obama had “no negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.” The phrasing may be weirdly Archie Bunkerish, but the underlying thought — that there is a distinctive pattern to the speech of many black Americans, one that Obama doesn’t share — is unassailable.<p> </p><br> Republican senators Jon Kyl and John Cornyn compared Reid’s comments to the ones that forced the resignation of Trent Lott as Senate majority leader. But there is no way to rephrase Lott’s words to make them sound sensible: “When Strom Thurmond ran for president, we voted for him. We’re proud of it. And if the rest of the country had followed our lead, we wouldn’t have had all these problems over the years, either.” Thurmond’s campaign was racist, and believing that several more decades of racial segregation would have alleviated “all these problems” was racist too.<p> </p><br> President Obama’s remark that “You don’t blow a bunch of cash on Vegas when you’re trying to save for college” may have offended the hospitality industry in the gambler’s desert oasis, but — substance check — would even Steve Wynn dispute that it’s not a great idea to deposit your college tuition into slot machines?<p> </p><br> If you want to get offended, get offended by destructive ideas, not inept phrasing.<p> </p><br> When Rahm Emanuel’s political obituary is written (pretty soon, at the rate he’s going), the words “f - - - ing retarded” will be forgotten.<p> </p><br> But the words you should remember every time you hear his name (or that of the president who evidently feels the same way) are the ones he shamelessly and publicly uttered to justify using economic turmoil as a pretext for federal power grabs in unrelated matters: “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that, it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.”<p> </p><br>

Kyle Smith