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Sarah Palin and more thoughts on offensive words

Posted By: Jake Jacobs
Date: Wednesday, 24 November 2010, at 12:26 a.m.

In Response To: Sarah Palin and more thoughts on offensive words (joe freedman)

Hi Joe (and Dan):

I grew up, as you did, in the fifties and sixties, and Mongoloid idiot was meant to be descriptive, not pejorative. It was Dr. Down's coinage that was inherently offensive. During that same era I was involved in some activities at Little City, a home for what were described back then as "mentally retarded adults," one of whom was introduced to me as "an idiot savant." After Rain Man "autistic savant" has come into vogue, though my understanding is that not all supposed "savants are autistic. The man that I met was indistinguishable from his cohort, by which I mean that his physical appearance suggested Down's Syndrome. He was, however, a Human Calendar. Rather a more modest gift than Raymond Babbitt's. (I hated the movie, by the way.)

We also used the term "pinhead," although actually the DeFiglia's, a family of microcephalics (one by marriage!), who used to turn up on my doorstep looking for my mom every so often (she had been appointed a guardian of their estate) were known colloquially as the "Peanut People." Trying to con them out of their inheritance was their cousin, Ken Little, aka "Red" Little, a borderline retarded short-order cook and quondam taxi driver. The last person in town he conned was a driver of mine: "If he tells you he is catching a bus to leave town forever, why the hell would you accept a personal charge!?" (Just to broaden the scope of impairment covered in this anecdote, my driver was a hunchback.) When my boss saw the charge card he laughed: "It's worth $3.85 to get rid of Kenny forever."

So I don't have a problem with the way we used the term. And I'd happily call Herb Roman's fashion sense, or Phil's checker plays, retarded. But if I meet a mentally challenged adult, and they confide that the term makes them uncomfortable, out of respect I won't use it. Just as I try to avoid using "midget" to describe, um, midgets. ("Dwarf," I know, I was kidding; please don't kick me in the shins!) But I might use it in a different description, e.g. "Clinton is a brilliant man, and the most talented politician of his generation, but he is a moral midget." (Nothing to do with Monica; she and I are picking different bones.)

And now that I have dissed the Great White Hope of the Liberal Party (gag, retch, and I say that as someone easily as liberal as Joe Freedman), I'll close with a comment about Clarence Thomas. I despise Anton Scalia's politics (though I hear he is a fun guy at a dinner party), but he is conceded to be a brilliant jurist. Thomas, thus far, has worked hard, but after a couple of decades of toil has left little to mark him. Had he been confirmed without comment in 2050 he'd be about as well remembered as Owen Stone. As for the ladies joining him on the bench, time will tell.

Best,

Jake

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