by JBG » Fri Feb 03, 2006 3:41 pm
Look, I apologise if I caused genuine offence, but lets get serious here, I used the word "Special Olympics" and "retarded" in one sentence and I get vilified.
Read my joke again: its an attack on fools who argue on the internet, not against diabled people. If you interpret that as being discriminatory or offensive then I think you are reading too much into it.
I'm annoyed as we know have got to a stage where if you open your mouth at all, you're in trouble. What I said was politically incorrect as I used a word that was frowned upon, a word that was in common usage up until the 1990s and is still accepted as common use in many parts of the world.
If you want to be anal about this, the paralympics is a competition for athletes who are physically disabled, the Special Olympics are for people with a mental or cognative disability. The word "retarded" implies a slow down if development and impediment. In my opinion, the classing of the mentally disabled as being "special" is equally as patronising, but it is a modern sanitised word deemed acceptable to political correctness.
I admit to being politically incorrect, but if that is the worst sin I've been guilty of, I'm not that worried.
As I said at the start, I apologise if people were genuinely offended, but I'm sorry, I think people who created an uproar over this are simply the same people who want to be offended and probably the same people who will tut tut if somebody refers to the "bad guys" in cowboy films as "Indians" instead of "Native Americans" or "black Americans" as "African Americans".
I appreciate that words cause offence, but this is going too far.
Last edited by
JBG on Fri Feb 03, 2006 4:07 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Jolly Bob Grumbine.