Said Joe Rogan, at the beginning of his new podcast.
I'd been noticing — and not just on Joe Rogan's podcast — that some people seem to want to feel free to say "retarded" again.
You don't really need that word, though, do you? You can always say "stupid." That makes me wonder why "stupid" survived when "retarded" was banished. But the answer is that "stupid" is a very old word that lived in ordinary speech and was applied broadly, and "retarded" was an innovation in the clinical setting that was designed to refer specifically to persons with a disability. It was supposed to be polite.
For the annals of Things I Asked Grok: Why is it that when something starts out good and turns bad it seems worse that something that was bad all along?
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62 comments:
Stupid doesn't do it as well as retarded. Retarded adds a layer of, I guess, stupidity that stupid alone doesn't imply.
The stereotype behavior comes up under the news polite name and the new polite name inherits it, and comes to be banned. Negro - Black - African American - which is it now.
There are no bad words, only bad externalities from their usage. There are absolutely people, events, things and situations that rise to being defined as "delayed or held back in terms of progress, development, or accomplishment."
For instance, the Mk-82 Snake Eye is a "retarded" bomb...I can't tell you the number of times I told that dumb bomb to finish high school.
Grok, what is the euphemism treadmill?
That makes me wonder why "stupid" survived when "retarded" was banished.
Implications. Retarded implies someone with cognitive disability that's most likely congenital and somewhat deserving of sympathy. Stupid implies more mental laziness than anything else. Although the word banners would have been going after stupid if given enough time.
Retarded the verb can mean 'restrict or 'slow" or 'limit' just as much as the adjective can mean mentally slow...or, when people stake sides of an issue, they are often retarding their outlook and considerations of the possibilities. I think this is most often a more accurate description than stupid which means inability to consider the other perspectives versus just an internal choice to cut them out of consideration. In the context you quoted, a verb or an adjective could be applied.
"want to feel free to say "retarded" again" ??
Speaking of retarded! Self-retarded to be specific. They were always free to say it - and they should have if they felt like it. Pathetic.
Your explanation contains the germ of the difference, and why people want 'retarded' to be acceptable. 'Stupid' also encompassing simple ignorance which can be cured by acceptance of correct information. 'Retarded' implies a condition under which no amount of correction will result in enlightenment.
Retarded: momentum restricted to an inertial frame, with varying degrees of freedom.
"Retarded" literally refers to speed. It suggests, wrongly, that the same goals can be reached, just more slowly.
"Stupid" implies that you're never going to get there.
And sound-wise, "stupid" feels meaner. "Retarded" sounds more childish and silly.
But "retarded" is the word with the taboo. There's a shared sense that it's the word we're not supposed to say. "Stupid" flies under the radar and it's crueler in its literal meaning and sound.
I work with intellectually disabled clients. I don't care if we use "retarded," but I think people are using it wrong. "Retarded" is a lack of intelligence, which means the person making bad decisions isn't to blame. They are exonerated by reason of disability. "Stupid," as I define it at work with clients, is the choice not to learn from experience. It's doing something when you know better.
In other words, stupid is as stupid does.
Can we start using the word "gay" again?
When I adjust the ignition timing on my gasoline fueled internal combustion engine, and I allowed to retard the spark?
Ixmay "retarded". Substitute "intellectually challenged". Of course stupid is okay--since stupid is forever. And when I look at the sort of television shows or podcasts called "retarded" it's really just that they are stupid.
Online peeps have been using 'retarded' for years. It ceased to refer to pathological intellectual disability (e.g., Down's) years ago; as others have mentioned, that sort of thing is regarded as a medical condition deserving of sympathy. My own usage/interpretation implies someone or something that should be smart/functional but is just being dumb or badly designed.
Obligatory:
From Idiocracy:
https://youtu.be/wYn8W_wsHVs?si=4mibAAOeDDeYCzHM
Joe Bar said...
“When I adjust the ignition timing on my gasoline fueled internal combustion engine, am I allowed to retard the spark?”
The inverse of being retarded is to be advanced. The symptoms of being too retarded and too advanced are often similar.
Retarded has a different plan for action than stupid, and the implications can be made use of in the insult.
I think that the movie, Tropic Thunder, put the word in the public dialogue again.
"Can we start using the word 'gay' again?"
That would be retarded.
My son and his HS pals used the term motarded (moron/retard) to critique the dim kids and teachers.
But nothing beats what my old friend the former special ed teacher used. FITH--fucked in the head. The ones with violent tendencies were FITH/MS. (Mean streak.)
It also seems that “moronic”, “idiotic”, and “imbecilic” have fallen out of use, presumably because they are offensive to morons, idiots, and imbeciles, who form a large and growing constituency in our country. But I welcome the return of “retarded”, as we need several synonyms for “stupid” in order to preserve the rich variety and expressiveness of the English language.
Joe Bar said, "Can we start using the word "gay" again?"
Some of us never stopped.
When I hear someone use the term retarded, I assume they are an imbecile.
Were the various terms originally a stratification based on IQ? I seem to recall that from my distant past of pre-woke education.
Of course use of IQ seems to be frowned on too.
My reference point for this is the Korean folk dance 병신춤 (Byeongshin Chum, literally sick body dance). Modern commentators go to great pains to tell us that the dance is satirising the upper classes, but if you watch old recordings (1980s or earlier), that would not be the most obvious interpretation -- it's clearly making fun of disabled people. But it was banned by the Japanese as socially undesirable, so a lot of Koreans feel obliged to defend it as part of their culture. Modern performances on youtube look a lot more sanitised to me (you could believe the dance really is intended to mock yangban, not the disabled) although there are still people who criticise it in Korea.
"Retarded" is like that. It was suppressed by a hostile colonising power, so reasserting the right to use it, even if it's a bit distasteful, becomes an expression of freedom.
Everybody can be stupid at times. When people want to say that someone else is stupid all the time, they look for another word. "Moron" or "imbecile" work pretty well, but before "retarded" came along, those were the accepted terms for ... well, ... people who were ... not bright ... all the time. You may be able to see the problem.
There's a parallel with how we refer to countries that are ... um ... backward. "Underdeveloped," "less developed," and "Third World" all in turn became unacceptable. The terms which were intended to be polite and non-stigmatizing eventually became insults themselves. Right now, "Third World" may sound worse than "less developed," which it replaced earlier. Joe Biden, prompted by his programmers, took care to bite his tongue and say, "the Global South," since that is apparently now the polite, politically correct term.
Years of calling people RACISTS, Nazi's, Hitlers, and white supremacists changed the way people talk about the people on the other side who hate them openly.
Skeptical Voter said...
Ixmay "retarded". Substitute "intellectually challenged".
I had a 350 in a ‘78 Camaro that drove like it was intellectually challenged no matter how far I twisted the distributor. As it turns out, 1978 was one of the first years that Chevy went with a 2-piece harmonic balancer where there was a neoprene gasket between the two parts. After about 15 years and 160k+ miles, the neoprene had worn enough for the outer part with the ignition marks to twist and shift in relation to the inner part, causing the timing to become intellectually challenged.
The solution was to replace the balancer and the distributor shaft/cap. I asked dad if we could decrease the intellectual challenge a couple of degrees from the stock specs. But he said no. And he was right. The engine ran great after that with no sign of intellectual disability.
When I was a kid, we referred to kids who were dumb as “retards”, or often just “tards”. And teachers referred to kids who were late for something as “tardy”. Is that still allowed?
wendybar said...
Years of calling people RACISTS, Nazi's, Hitlers, and white supremacists changed the way people talk about the people on the other side who hate them openly.
Yep. I believe our host could add her "civility bullshit" tag to this discussion. I find it increasingly difficult to care much about the bien pensant "not our kind, dear" sensibilities of the self-appointed freelance moral instructors.
"And sound-wise, "stupid" feels meaner. "Retarded" sounds more childish and silly."
Disagree. "Stupid" includes that infantile "ooo" sound, which can be dragged out to sound even more silly. "Retarded" has those lovely consonants that produce a forceful, clipped sound.
Retarded:stupid as garner:get.
Retard is one of my favorite words and I was never giving it up. Stupid is a hard sharp word. When I use Retard there is almost always irony involved, even if only faintly. I was once (~2010) asked at a public event to sign a “pledge” that I would never use the R word again. I wondered if the person who instigated this was having fun at the expense of his retarded friends.
The term "retard' seems to be popular in the Boston area, particularly when it comes out as "retaaahd".
I don't feel tardy.
"I don't feel tardy."
OK, we'll let you slide this once. But do it twice and you'll be retardy.
"Retarded," "idiot," "imbecile," "moron," "Negro," "colored," and "Afro-American." These are a few one-time lefty-progressive terms that became negative and taboo once the mainstream started using them. You can change the words but attitudes persist. Generation after generation leftists NEVER accept that truism.
Academics and professionals also love insdier jargon and hate it when outsiders get on their turf and challenge their pronouncements.
Don't give yourself a myocardial infarction over this. Drink a glass of dihydrogen monoxide, but don't choke on it. Many people die from too much or too little dihydrogen monoxide.
Imus does a couple of Lizzie Grubman skits link (google her for the situation) after she runs over several people who annoyed her. It's a retard script.
Back in the 60s and 70s, I lived and went to elementary school on the perimeter of one if not the oldest and largest public incarceral mental asylums in the US.
In the 1800s it was originally called a "School for the Feeble-Minded."
The name apparently stuck. Whether they escaped or were let out for the day, most people in the neighborhood referred to the patient/inmates as "feebs." It was more of a short-hand than an insult.
Perhaps because of the institutionalization itself, they were readily identifiable and profoundly different in appearance and behavior.
It was a different time.
"some people seem to want to feel free to say "retarded" again"
Nostalga
I prefer "slow". I've noticed the use of "mid-wit" a lot because, I assume, of people wanting to kick people they think are just one level down, and because mid-wit would imply "this person can hold down a job and maybe even works at a big law firm but is still...well". Such a person isn't slow, except compared (allegedly) to the person who is referring to him as a mid-wit.
I always advocated for a 'greater than gross negligence' standard dubbed "Styooopid."
Is stupid okay again? It wasn’t some years back. Kids at school were taught to never use that word. I had a small kid…probably about 6…admonish me when I used it (I was saying that I did something stupid.) What was both amusing and irritating was his Dad explained to me that it’s not a word “we” use. My thought was, “I see. But it’s perfectly okay for a 6 year old to admonish an adult.” Disconnect.
"Degradation" is a well known linguistic phenomenon in which terms, even euphemisms, for various categories of entities/phenomena, including bodily functions, smells, women, ethnic or religious minorities, and disabled people, over time evolve from positive to neutral to pejorative.
Stenc(h) was a neutral or even positive word in Anglo-Saxon (the "wonderous stench of the phoenix is like incense"). Now it is very negative. Likewise the Latin-derived "odor" and Germanic "smell" have become pejorative, and although "aroma" and "scent" have replaced them at the positive end of the spectrum, in time we can expect those words to become pejorative as well.
For women, "gossip" was a positive/neutral word in Anglo-Saxon (god-sibb = good cousin / relative), and "hussy" was a term of approbation in the 17th century that meant someone who was good at keeping house.
"Retard," "moron," and "imbecile" were all invented to replace earlier pejorative terms, but in time they themselves became pejorative, as originally neutral "handicapped" and "disabled" are starting to become.
I think the issue with "retarded" is both that it was a VERY commonly used word in childhood / college among GenX (who tend to be less tolerant of being told what to say/do than older or younger generations), and that it was one of the first words to be aggressively language-policed in a way that always felt somewhat dishonest and artificial (i.e., people being performatively offended on behalf of someone else).
Personally, I loathe language-policing and have fought back against it since the late '80s, but I stopped using "retarded" after a student very calmly and rationally asked me not to use it and, instead of emoting or acting offended, made a calm and logical argument based in part on his experience with his brother being extremely disabled. His point was not that the word hurt disabled people when not said directly to them, but that it caused distress to their care-givers and loved ones because they could not tell when it was being used casually and when there was animus behind it.
Joe Bar said...
When I adjust the ignition timing on my gasoline fueled internal combustion engine, and I allowed to retard the spark?
I think you have to developmentally disable it.
Why is it that when something starts out good and turns bad it seems worse than something that was bad all along?
Joe Rogan's emotional defense of Dave Smith and his defense of Darryl Cooper was one of those things. Rogan defended Smith's right to discuss history on his podcast despite his lack of historical training. What's the harm? Smith doesn't announce that his knowledge is very limited and biased, he comes across as good natured and well informed.
Rogan and Smith defended and described the Darryl Cooper program, "Fear and Loathing in the New Jerusalem," as nuanced. I listened briefly and the nonsense Cooper spewed was so twisted and infuriating I had to shut it off. He started telling the horror story of pogroms of Jews in Russia, in very dramatic and graphic detail describing the terror of individual experiences, which he created out of his imagination, obviously demonstrating for the audience his sympathy for Jews as human beings. He then explained that this trauma from pogroms led to Zionists whom he described as violent young men. Cooper's bigger point was that Zionists were the cause of the conflict with Palestinians as if the violence began with the Zionists. This is not nuance, this is a completely false description of Zionism, a totally false history of Israel, and a complete gaslighting of the wars perpetrated against Israel by its Arab neighbors.
What's the harm of an amateur historian or comedian acting as if they are well informed on a subject and sharing their personal versions of history, and getting hundreds of thousands of views on the internet? What's the harm if young people get their education on tiktok?
Making information widely available and allowing for discussion starts out as a good thing but it turns bad when the information is hateful and deliberately false and "retards" dominate social media. Then hatred for Jews really becomes a horror. It's bad enough when antisemites repeat lies among their small circle of friends, but when it goes viral it gets really bad. You end up with an explosion of antisemitic acts.
Making information widely available and allowing for discussion starts out as a good thing but it turns bad when the information is hateful and deliberately false and "retards" dominate social media.
Rosalyn, what's your plan for shutting down bad speech? Arresting Joe Rogan? Arresting his speaker? You want to fine him and take all his money? Why do you have this faith in government, that our authorities are always good and true and heroic, and are never bad or dangerous or corrupt?
The remedy for bad speech is more speech, corrective speech. Mock the speaker. And mock Joe Rogan for having a nitwit on his podcast.
Then hatred for Jews really becomes a horror.
Speaking of bad histories, you might do some research into free speaking societies, and repressed societies, and give us all a report on which ones did horrible things to the Jews. Nazi Germany was not a free-speaking place. That was a place where the government controlled the airwaves.
I listened briefly and the nonsense Cooper spewed was so twisted and infuriating I had to shut it off.
I once threw a book into a wall, it was so bad. You can't stop bad thoughts, bad ideas, or bad emotions by outlawing them.
Pro-life voices have been censored for decades in the USA. Not by the government, but by media corporations and the people that run them. Something like 97% of journalists identify as pro-choice. And they censor the truth and run their narratives.
That's why our media never shows us atrocities against unborn children. It runs against the political agenda of a one-party state that controls our airwaves (at least on this issue).
It's not censorship that's going to save our babies. It's free speakers and a respect for our free speech clause. (Joe Rogan, by the way, has had at least one pro-lifer on his podcast, and probably more).
"Educate and inform the whole mass of our people. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."
-- Thomas Jefferson
The baby that Justice Kennedy writes about in Carhart II had Down's syndrome.
I prefer a mean world where people laugh and tease a kid with Down's syndrome, to a "nice" world where we terminate the baby and pretend like we are better people than the kid we killed.
It's hard and rough raising a retarded kid in this world. But you nice people who kill off the handicapped? You are not nice. And may God have mercy on us for our lies and our violence. Our children and our grandchildren will be amazed and ashamed that we let these atrocities happen.
Broken link at 1:42. See if this works.
Well, I for one agree that Joe Rogan is stupid. Talking about people to someone I have never heard before, and naming people that cannot be identified properly, is a waste of podcast streaming time.
BTW, Churchill was not as bad at the end of WWII as FDR who gave away Eastern Europe to Stalin.
Retarded brings the full weight of people's ableist bullshit. When you call someone stupid, you aren't intentionally invoking the negative stereotypes that were leveraged against the kids you went to school with who had intellectual disabilities. The folks in this comment section who have said that retarded feels like a better insult understand this. Whatever the case, using disability to mock and insult people hurts people with disabilities, and makes the person using that language look trashy.
"Retarded" and "retard" are perfectly acceptable words to describe the limitation of something like flow through a valve as it is moved towards a closed position. Let's not be niggardly with out word acceptance, or we end up being censored by people of limited intelligence who choose to find offense where none is intended.
"...some people seem to want to feel free to say 'retarded' again."
No. People want to speak freely. And, if they're restricted as to what they can say, they seem to want to deliberately go against those restrictions. Especially if the restrictions seem arbitrary.
My favorite word that has “evolved from positive to neutral to pejorative” is awful, which used to mean what we mean today by awesome.
I personally find nothing wrong with retarded (or moron) for that matter. As someone once said, it would be retarded to think that that term is (typically) being applied to an intellectually challenged person today.
Beyond that, midwit is okay—though not quite right, except when it is—but I really (more often) like the Old English term unwit.
"It is my sincere belief that the reason the words g*y and r*tarded were rendered taboo un-words (unless used in the literal context) was not because they were causing offense, but as a plot to rob the average Joe of the two most succinct words he'd use to describe modern society."
- @acczibit marquis de posade
I’m amused when I hear someone going on about a “special” agent of the FBI. A special agent is just one whose agency is less broad than a general agent.
Kind of like Einstein's “special theory of relativity” versus his “general theory.”
I was not suggesting censorship of social media or shutting anyone down. I was pointing out the difficulties which come from a potentially positive source of sharing knowledge which has been turned into something malevolent. This is not a new problem for mankind but one made worse because of our technology.
I don't know the solution to 'a lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on.'
The best I can do is not fall for a lie and share what I know about the deception on the technology which has been used to spread lies. A single voice in the wilderness is better than nothing at all.
Rosalyn, glad to hear you're a free speaker!
I haven't seen any of these episodes. Cooper's the guy who blamed Churchill for World War 2. (Skipped it).
Here's Douglas Murray giving a really big pushback to Smith and Rogan. Murray is a sharp guy, I'm a big fan of his.
It ought to be remembered, but is usually forgotten, that in the decades after Gutenberg the most popular genre of books was on finding and punishing witches.
Enlightenment took a while to catch up.
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