Re: sturdy old apple

["Tim Haynes" <timhaynes@no.spam.please.alumni.uwaterloo.ca>]

"B.B." <DoNotSpamthegoat4@airmail.net.com.org.gov.tw.ch.ru> wrote in message
DoNotSpamthegoat4-5A4FBF.21024626072004@library.airnews.net">news:DoNotSpamthegoat4-5A4FBF.21024626072004@library.airnews.net...
> In article <9bOdnXeRJpyUz5jcRVn-jg@comcast.com>,
>  "Bill Garber" <willy46pa@comcast DOT net> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >:    How is she degrading them?
> >
> >didn't you read the article??? What if you had
> >a mentally infirmed relative, would you like them
> >being called "tards"???
>
>    I'm the one who posted the link.
>    I mean specifically, how is she degrading them?  I can perfectly
> understand the gut reaction of people who are offended, but I want to
> know if anyone who's offended by the site can articulate a reason beyond
> "It's just wrong."
>    My personal feelings about people calling my relatives "tards" don't
> have any bearing on that.

My experience of growing up in a school that had a "special education" wing
for mentally handicapped children could be informative.  It was drilled into
us from very early on that you refer to these disabled children as 'special'
or 'Franklin Wing students' (their rooms were in a wing of the school called
the Franklin wing).  Calling any of them 'retarded', 'tards', 'cripples',
etc... would land you a private meeting with the principal.

Since WE were taught that these children need special sensitivity (and,
moreover, this made sense to us)  I cannot imagine that the person who runs
this blog, or the place where they work, could have initially ever thought
that calling such a child a 'tard' was a clean, linguistically neutral
language token.  It sounds too much like 'retarded', which is usually
considered a slur.  They should just come clean in their FAQ and admit that
someone started using the label one day, and it stuck, although they know
it's wrong. If they really wanted a more positive and useful language token,
they should consider calling the children 'angels' or 'gels' for short.
Then they could refer to the children thusly: "I had a hard day today with
the gels.  One gel did this, the other gel did that...." and nobody would be
offended.

I personally find it offensive that they could even attempt to justify their
use of the abbreviated version of 'retard' and expect me to buy their lame
accusation the reader projecting their biases.  It beggars belief that they
could truly believe that 'tard' is an inoffensive word and that everybody
ELSE has the problem if they are upset by the subjecting the children (and
blog readers) to that phrase.

In short, they are being pedantic to cover up their unwillingness to assign
dignity to these children in their writing and speech, as well as using a
commonly recognized abbreviated slur to refer to the disabled.

Cheers
Tim