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Re: A word about "retard." A few years ago, when it became known Reagan

The situation of being senile, retarded, crippled or insane is such that no matter what euphemism we employ to describe them people will start to get defensive and see the term as pejorative.

It's like when saying "colored people" was a nice way to describe Negroes, then "colored people" became a pejorative and now has come full circle and is OK if twisted into "people of color".

Or when they came up with the euphemism "special" for retarded. Next thing you know kids are insulting each other by calling each other "special". Some things are bad things and calling them by different names won't make them good things.

It's all bullshit. You can't keep up with what's "nice". Of course one avoids obviously hateful terms but saying that the senile are in fact senile seems harmless to me. Or less harmless than pretending senility doesn't exist.


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