This should be Rahm's reply to critics of his calling lefty activists "retarded'
This is ridiculous:
Advocates for people with disabilities went to the White House today to talk with chief of staff Rahm Emanuel to talk about his language -- and not the expletives for which he is famous.
Emanuel again apologized for using the word "retarded" to describe an ad campaign proposed by liberal allies, a comment reported by The Wall Street Journal.
In a statement, the group -- including the leaders of the Special Olympics and the American Association of People with Disabilities -- said they accepted Emanuel's apology, and hope that more Americans understand that "the R-word is polluting our language."
The statement added: "Every day our community hears this word -- in schools and workplaces, in print and in movies, on radio and television. And every day they suffer its dehumanizing effects -- mockery, stigma, ridicule. This is a word that is incredibly damaging -- not only to the seven million people with intellectual disabilities, but also their friends, family and to all of us."
In case you missed it, this is the second apology in two days that Rahm has been forced to make by the Word Police -- egged on by Sarah Palin and a phalanx of righties eager to score points against Team Obama:
White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel apologized to the head of the Special Olympics today after the Wall Street Journal reported the fiery Chicagoan privately called a group of liberal activists "f---ing retarded."
Last August, Emanuel "showed up at a weekly strategy session featuring liberal groups and White House aides," the Journal's Peter Wallsten reported lastTuesday."Some attendees said they were planning to air ads attacking conservative Democrats who were balking at Mr. Obama's health-care overhaul. 'F—ing retarded,' Mr. Emanuel scolded the group, according to several participants. He warned them not to alienate lawmakers whose votes would be needed on health care and other top legislative items."
Rahm was right. The lefties who wanted to attack moderate Democrats in Congress about health care were fucking retarded. Oh, sorry, they were fucking idiots...imbeciles...morons. But those are all words that once upon a time were used to describe, er, those people with less developed cognitive abilities and were ruled out for such a use and replaced by, you guessed it, "retarded."
In fact, the "advocates for people with disabilities" views notwithstanding, "mental retardation" is still a diagnostic term used in American disability law. While those advocates, who regard the term as pejorative and prefer "intellectual disability" are gaining ground, the change is a very recent one. Only three years ago the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities was still called the American Association on Mental Retardation.
So Rahm may be a little behind the times, but really, is his use of so common a term so outrageous that his guilt could not be extirpated without a White House pow wow at which he groveled before people who still used that same term a few years ago? And anyway, isn't "retarded," which implies clearly that a person is slow or delayed in developing cognitive skills, better than "intellectually disabled," which implies a permanent lack of those skills?
Perhaps even more importantly, Rahm did not call any intellectually disabled people "retarded." In a private meeting at his place of work, he called some members of his own political party "retarded" for advancing a really stupid idea.
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