If you've tuned into the news recently, you may have heard about the Texas high school that's now in hot water for referring to special needs students as "mentally retarded" in its 2012 yearbook. After a bunch of limp-wristed lily-livered parents got their panties in a bunch, school officials were forced to recall the yearbooks. This is just one more situation which proves what I have long believed to be true: America has turned into a nation of sad-sack pansies and wimps.
The problem here is that there isn't a darn thing wrong about the term mentally retarded. It is a medically-approved term for a person with an IQ below 70 (in other words, about ten IQ points higher than the average American Idol viewer). Retarded is derived from the Latin word retardare, which means "to make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder," so mental retardation means the same as mentally delayed, and people who are "special" are, in fact, mentally hindered. Any kid who has to wear a helmet even when he's not riding a bicycle and who likes to lick the windows on the mini-bus he rides to school doesn't have a brain that's firing on all cylinders, if you catch my drift. He is, in the most literal interpretation of the word, mentally retarded.
In fact, even us regular folks are capable of being mentally retarded at any given time. Every year when I do my taxes I am mentally retarded. When my wife tries to read a road map, she becomes mentally retarded. When my grandson fails an algebra exam, he is mentally retarded. Since "retard", as a verb, means to "make slow, delay, keep back, or hinder", I guess that makes us all retards on some level. And if you find that to be offensive then you, my friend, are intellectually retarded. If retarded was such a vulgar and offensive word, Mr. Webster wouldn't have put it in his dictionary.
In order to see just how overly-sensitive (or emotionally retarded) we have become as a society, let's take a brief trip back in American history to a bygone era. If you think the 19th and early 20th centuries were a kinder, gentler, purer period in time, think again! Before all this politically-correct nonsense was stuffed in our faces, this is what America looked like:
Yes, that's sheet music for a popular song in the 1800s. Ordinary folks would gather 'round the ol' piano and listen to Papa play a rousing rendition of "Coon, Coon, Coon". Today, writing a song like that would get you busted for a hate crime- but back in 1880 it was wholesome family entertainment!
In the early 1900s, people were so insensitive that companies had no qualms about creating ads that were not only racist, but "homophobic" as well. Try going up to a co-worker today and say "Why doesn't your mama wash you with fairy soap?" and you'll be forced to attend a mandatory sensitivity training seminar.
Can you believe that some ad agency bigwigs sat around a table and decided that this ad was a good idea? "Smith, have you come up with any ideas about how we can sell Cream of Wheat?" "Well, boss, I do have one idea I'm tinkering with. How about an illiterate darky who downplays the fact that the product has no nutritional value?" "Smith, you glorious bastard, that's pure genius!" "Why, thank you, I...." "Shhhh!" "What's wrong, boss?" "Don't talk, Smith. Coon Coon Coon is on the radio. I love this song!"
This one makes you nostalgic for the 1950s. It was an era of soda fountains, poodle skirts, and beating the crap out of your wife for purchasing the wrong coffee at the grocery store.
The best part of this ad is the fine print. Today, throwing a woman on the floor and stepping on her will get you 5 years in the hoosegow for domestic violence, but in the 1960s, it made you a hero!
I have to give a lot of credit to the Italians, because you never hear about them getting offended. Take a look at any pizza box, and you'll see a smiling mustached Guido with a chef hat, as if every pizza is made by a stereotypical Italian who looks like Super Mario. If you don't think that stereotype is offensive, it's the equivalent of an ad for a jewelry store featuring a cartoon Jew with a big nose. So here's a thought, America. Instead of your witch-hunt against folks who use the term mentally retarded, go burn down a factory that makes pizza boxes.
These ads were based on the prejudices of the time.But are really nothing today.I am oppose to political correct censorship[ cause it does not stop the actions of prejudice, but actually makes conservative s into martyrs, giving them more in their actions. We need to keep real hate out in the open so we can use more speech against it.This give conservatives less power . political correct censorship is something promoted by sneaky conservative and communist
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