By Darrell Gwaltney
Following the last presidential debate and referring to President Obama, conservative commenter Ann Coulter tweeted: “I highly approve of Romney’s decision to be kind and gentle to the retard.” Reaction to her poor choice of words was swift and poignant.
Particularly effective was the post by John Franklin Stephens, a 30-year-old man with Down syndrome. In his post he eloquently writes: “After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the president by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult, and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.”
He then wrote being compared to someone like him should be a badge of honor because, “No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.”
Now this happened a week ago and may feel like old news, except Coulter continues to try to justify her language by piling more offensive language upon her initial insensitive word.
Friday night she appeared on CNN’s “Piers Morgan Tonight” and said: “It’s offensive according to whom? Moron, idiot, cretin, imbecile, these were exactly like retard, once technical terms to describe people with mental disabilities.”
She claims the “r-word” is a synonym for loser and says she has used it several times since the debate. This is an unfortunate and false claim she is using to justify her poor word choice. The word is no synonym for “loser,” except perhaps in the cultural dictionary she continues to create.
The answer to her question, “It’s offensive according to whom?” would be, “It’s offensive to people who have been insulted and dismissed by that term.”
Two years ago, then White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel used the phrase “retarded” to describe strategies advocated by those unhappy with the pace of health care reform. Sarah Palin and Rush Limbaugh quickly criticized him. Emanuel had the good sense to apologize.
Christopher Fairman wrote an excellent article titled “The Case Against Banning the Word ‘Retard’” in response to that controversy. He argued against banning the word given the price we all would pay for freedom of expression.
Banning any word only opens the door for another offensive word. Instead, we must choose our words with care and respect for others.
Words have the power to heal and to harm. Words carry the breath of life in them, and they can easily take life away with their speaking. The freedom words afford to us does not extend to our abusing and denigrating others with them. Our words have power.
Retard is a legitimate word to use as a verb when describing an action, but it is not socially responsible to use it to describe another human being. Most of all, it is inappropriate because it dehumanizes and stereotypes someone.
We should never use language that dismisses or diminishes someone else. We should never use a term we would not want applied to ourselves.
Coulter used an unfortunate term and in trying to defend her actions only compounds her offense. We have an opportunity to learn from her insensitivity and pay more attention to the varied ways we use language.
May we all think more carefully about how we describe others or speak about their actions.