It must feel good to recieve solid evidence backing your theory regarding the Pillowman's audience.

So, out of curiosity, what's the Stranger style guide say about the use of the word "retarded" to describe developmentally challenged people?

"developmental disabilities"

I must be out of some new language loop - I have not heard the word retarded used in 15 years - anywhere.

Something new happening? Perhaps I am too retarded to follow such trends.

The only time I ever saw my mother in a cold furry was at the use by a teenager era friend at our house of the word retarded. Guess mom had an early elevated social ethic.

Thanks for the spoiler, asshole.

Common net.courtesy says you should put an alert before your post, like this

SPOILER ALERT

then give some space before you launch into your "Darth is Luke's father" speech.

Oh, did I mention I think you're a retard?

Um, Pillowman closed last weekend. There's nothing left to spoil.

I'm sure that I'm not the only reader who is highly offended by your continued ableist use of that word. It reveals a startling amount of ignorance and disrespect.

Ableist!! Lol

To TRLD and all the "highly offended" readers:

I use "retarded" all the time in a non-derogatory way. The word means "checked; impeded; delayed." Is that really more derisive than "disabled"? Is it any less condescending than "differently abled"? Euphemisms are more offensive than simple descriptors.

Don't you agree?

As the preeminent social psychologist specialing in 'Tards, and Adults who wear cartoon characters on their clothing in earnest, I can say that 'Retarded' is what they prefer. Most of them cannot even say 'developmental' or disability...too many syllables. Keep it simple, stupid, that's our motto...

Where there any negros among the retards that you noticed?

I wasn't there, JB, but it's possible that there were some blacks among them. And your racism disgusts me.

Where's fnarf, anyway?

Also, you fucking drama queen, nobody called them "retards".

No matter what word you use, "retarded", "disabled", etc. etc., it will inevitably be adopted as derogatory slang because of teh nature of what it describes. All politcal correctness has accomplished on this issue is that by year 2023 when a friend makes a stupid suggestion your response will be, "Dude, that's developmentally challenged." or "dude, stop being so mentally disabled". Then we'll have to come up with a whole new clever, and temporarily non-offensive euphemism.

Then there's what I would imagine was the original intent of the post (rather than sparking a discourse on PC language): isn't bringing a group *of that nature* highly inappropriate? I certainly don't work in the field (theater or developmental psychology), but from the descriptor of the show, isn't it a little like... er... I was going to go with bringing your senile grandmother to Soylent Green, but that doesn't seem entirely apt. Suggestions?

Taking your dog to see Old Yeller?

well at least you didn't call the audience blind, i don't even want to imagine the pc shitstorm that would have created.

Brendan,

I don’t agree that so-called “euphemisms” such as “people with disabilities” or “people with cognitive disabilities” are more offensive than the word “retarded.” Anyone who has the most remote awareness of the realities of racism/sexism, power and oppression would realize that language is powerful and the histories of words in context are not to be taken lightly.

But, worse than simply your use of the word (which is still used in a derogatory way by people who consider themselves “progressives” and have long since denounced using “gay” for the same purpose), is the fact that you purposely used this word as a (VERY witty) pun to simultaneously refer to retarded as a descriptor of those who are “laughably unintelligent and slow” and to those with cognitive disabilities. It is careless to use the word “retarded” to deride or mock someone or something that one finds to be unfavorable. In your attempt to be clever, however, you go further to make the connection between the mocking colloquial usage of the word and individuals who actually have cognitive disabilities.

It saddens me that people feel the need to defend the use of language with such a derogatory and painful history simply because it refers to those who have disabilities rather than to other victims of oppression. And it IS simply hilarious that you thought the audience was merely dumb and unperceptive, and now you find that they are “actually retarded.” It reminds me of when, for instance, my friend accused me of “jewing” her out of money before realizing (oh the hilarious irony!) I actually AM Jewish. Perhaps you should include that clever pun in your next Neil Simon (or Eugene O’Neil, right?) review.

I’m sure that you would agree with me in finding that kind of anti-Semitism unbelievably offensive. I would insist that using ableist language (those who laugh at that term should educate themselves about the history of the disability rights movement) should be no different.

Hi Brendan,

You know, I don't agree. And here's why:

You object that "it just means checked, impeded, delayed." Historically, "retarded" (and its cousin "retard") have already had their meaning established as derisory (and mean-spirited) when applied to people. Generally, until such time as a culture is able to incorporate a "strange" element, that group gets labeled and relabeled in an attempt to keep ahead of the contamination of being strange. Retarded was tainted by use years ago.

Frequent use of a term is no legitimization of it. Surely you must be aware that the question of what's offensive doesn't rest with "what you meant" but also with how it's heard. So listen.

Finally, "retarded" is not a simple descriptor. For all intents and purposes it means someone who's "odd." It's not descriptive of much besides the speaker's appropriation of normalcy. I have an autistic brother. I've met people with all sorts of mental health issues and impairments. Retarded doesn't apply in any meaningful medical sense, except as a blanket exclusionary term. Blind at least has the virtue of indicating someone can't see; what does retarded indicate? That they're what...retarded? Emotionally? In areas of learning? Physically: in height or coordination?

I know people use the term retarded in casual conversation; I've tried gently pointing out that since I grew up with a publicly labeled "retard" for a brother, I am sensitive to the word's judgemental implications (when used as you did in your headline to impugn supposedly normal people with the idea of dysfunction).

I make a point of telling you all this because you review theater and I'm taken aback that you could be so emotionally tone-deaf as to use "retarded" in a headline. That, to me, was the weirdest part.

Also, I have a migraine, so I'm feeling cranky enough to complain.

Some wit, some low life scumble mumble, and TRL --- you said it best.

Words matter a great deal.

In the vast array of human potential and skills and adaptation and modernity on issues and language --- what the hell are you people thinking?

I like differenly abled - I use it for my blind sister, a niece with problems of all sorts from birth, a nephew who has a deformed spine and myself with heart and muscle problems.....

The quality of life of all is not part of some middle class normative factor derived from the comfines of the conformist culture of small town America.

Brendan is not gay.....his response to a post. He might be a bit more word sensitive if he had been called names his whole life, a variety of them, all based on simply being different.....naught else.

Note to Dave Bowman:

SPOILER ALERT!

Hamlet dies at the end of the play.

Sorry, guess I should have dont it this way:

SPOILER ALERT!
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
/
Hamlet dies at the end of the play.

Apologies to anyone who did know...

I'm giving my last word on the "retard" issue to a friend of mine who's been working with retarded folks for several years. He calls us all out for quibbling over vocabulary not getting the most offensive thing about Lynette's letter:

"As someone who spent seven years working to make life better for people with developmental disabilities (the currently accepted moniker for people who suffer from the official diagnosis 'mental retardation') I am not concerned in the slightest about people throwing around the word 'retard.'

Words are words; we have elevated some - like cunt, nigger, kike, and faggot - to such heights of emotional tension that only certain people are able to use them in certain contexts, and everyone else anytime else is labeled a bigot for creating certain series of sounds.

Generally, I'd advocate the free use of words, and concern myself more with the intent behind them. No one intends to disparage the developmentally disabled by calling her friends retards.

The problem with Lynette's note - the thing that does make her and maybe everyone else who replied in the comments and maybe even you a bigot for not having pointed it out - is that she assumes that the people sitting in front of her were incapable of enjoying the art they were viewing. Maybe one of the retarded attendees read something about the play, saw that it featured a retarded person, and decided to go and convinced some of his friends to go with him.

The only people to whom we limit the free access of ideas are children. Retards, be they loud during a performance, pissing on themselves in public or sitting peacefully on a bus, are not children. To treat them as such, to treat them as anything less than full adults with all the rights, responsibilities and privileges of adulthood is the act of a bigot. And, if you think about it long enough you'll realize that to engage in that kind of bigotry - bigotry based on nothing more than an IQ test - is extremely dangerous."

Brendan,

It’s a shame that you’ve already declared your last word said on this topic before listening to a “free exchange of words” in response to your declaration that everyone who has posted here so far is a “bigot.” Your pathetic attempt to find some “larger issue” in which we can all share blame rather than simply admitting and apologizing for an ignorant mistake is embarrassingly transparent. What is at issue here is not that “everyone is a bigot for not realizing that art reaches all people” (which is laughably trite and completely irrelevant), but that YOU are a bigot for using bigoted and offensive language to make a mediocre pun and refusing to acknowledge your mistake. This is not to say that Lynette’s note didn’t reveal her own ignorance on many levels. I won’t argue with you on that. But, deservedly or not, YOU are the section editor at the weekly paper, and YOU are the individual who decided to use offensive, outdated, and bigoted language to make a pun the purpose of which was to mock people with cognitive disabilities.

It is also YOU, Brendan Kiley, theatre editor at The Stranger, who seems to think that racial slurs and misogynistic language aren’t getting enough journalistic airtime (by the way, I very much appreciate your one-person mission to reverse that trend, and thought that your listing of racial slurs earlier was charming and COMPLETELY necessary to prove the point of a straight white guy.). I highly doubt, however, that your bosses at The Stranger would allow you (again, privileged straight white guy) to include the “n” word in an article title. If they share your conviction about the harmlessness of bigoted language, I wonder why you haven’t yet used any of these words which you think we give too much power, and which you (from your oh-so-enlightened place of privilege) consider merely a “certain series of sounds.” Perhaps it’s because these words are not, in our society, merely a “certain series of sounds” (perhaps you need to be introduced to the concept of “linguistics” as well as disability), but words which carry with them unique, painful, and complex histories and interact in impactful relationships of power and oppression, as well as heavy and undeniable emotional weight for individuals who (apparently unlike you) have been victims of oppression based on race, gender and disability.

So, until I start making or agreeing with the ignorant and offensive statements made in Lynette’s note or your article/post (and I will not apologize for singling you, who have a relative position of authority, out for approach over a random letter-writer), I will not deign to join the “bigot club” that you’ve dared to place me in. This is because, unlike you, I acknowledge my privilege and educate myself to use language carefully and respectfully. Also unlike you, when I do make mistakes, I acknowledge that I have made them and don’t pathetically attempt to change the subject or pawn them off on others. And I certainly don’t ask others to excuse my privileged self and push aside their anger/disgust/pain to “look at the intent” behind my bigoted language. So, before including me and the other careful, educated and conscientious posters in your bigot club perhaps you should take responsibility for your actions before you confirm the fact that you’re not only a privileged bigot, but an arrogant ass as well.

My apologies, TRL. Everything following the colon was a direct quote from the email of a friend, who was calling ME a bigot. I should have been clearer about that.

(Also, for what it's worth, "The Audience is Retarded" was not a pun to the effect: "The Audience is Stupid." It is the argument Martin McDonagh makes in The Pillowman by symbolically representing the audience as a retarded character. I pulled that out for the headline because I thought it was one of the most interesting parts of the play. If you don't like it, take it up with McDonagh.)

And my apologies, Brendan, for assuming that what you posted as your "last word," despite its author, would be something you agreed with and would be willing to stand behind. But I guess you can't take responsibility for that, either.

As to my mistaking your title for a pun, I'm sure you realize that your explanation doesn't change my beef with your use of oppressive language.

TRL, you rock!! Brendan comes off as the typical priviledged hipster who believes he is too jaded, ironic and above it all to be contributing to discrimination; he is either just intellectually lazy or doesn't give a crap that he is reinforcing oppressive stereotypes, or both. either way, I don't care what his excuses are, I'll just skip over his articles and not read his stuff in the future. Thanks for saving my time!

TRLD,

What Brendan's friend pointed out is that the intent behind certain language is what matters, and not the language itself - not the series of sounds.

We all understand that context matters in language and linguistics. Gay people and their friends routinely through around the word "faggot" with no malicious intent or worry of offending their friends. Similar contexts allow the friendly use of the word "nigger." Would you or I lob one of these words at someone we didn't know intimately, even if we didn't intend harm? No - because we'd be worried about the effect our language might have, and rightly so.

What Kiley's friend was pointing out is that there was a very real bigotry being aimed at retarded people - the writer of the original note to Brendan and everyone that posted afterwards assumed that retarded people needed to be "exposed" to theatre, that they couldn't possibly have made the decision to attend on their own.

You, along with most of the rest, in your facile and misguided outrage over the use of "retarded" in Brendan's article - and here I'll point out that "Mentally Retarded" is a universally employed technical term for a particular diagnosis that is most frequently tossed in with all the other "Developmental Disabilities" - missed the very real bigotry that was going on right under your nose.

What you have done reminds me of a Women’s Studies student who advocated for the replacement of all the male terms for god in the Bible with gender-neutral ones. What she forgot to address is that the Bible is – certainly by modern feminist standards – an inherently sexist document not for how it addresses god, but for how it treats women.

On top of all of that, "retarded" isn't even a slur. It is not oppressive language. Go get morally outraged over something that matters - like the fact that all the posts prior to Brendan's friend's assumed that retarded people were children.