The perfect storm of cowardice

Today is the official kickoff of the “spread the word to end the word” campaign by the Special Olympics to raise awareness of people’s use of the word “retard,” which I was reminded about here.

I have mixed feelings on a “ban” of this or any word, but making people consider what comes out of their mouth or what they put to paper is definitely a good thing.

I also just found this piece with John C. McGinley talking a bit about the campaign and his son where he talks about the campaign and “the perfect storm of cowardice to exercise your vitriol”:

I get what McGinley’s saying here, though I find that more often than not, people aren’t trying to offend or cause pain when they say “retard” or “retarded;” they’re simply not thinking about the fact that those words mean something to a particular group of people. So if you do nothing else today, just think about it, eh?

The image at the top of the post is part of the ad campaign from the Special Olympics, and it’s the first I’ve seen that really tackles some of the nastiness of this language head-on, which is good. (two more can be found here). I advocated for something very similar a while back after I saw Tropic Thunder. More often than not, it seems like there’s too much of an effort to be “nice” about these things, and unfortunately, “nice” doesn’t push people’s buttons enough to make them consider the way they talk or write or maybe even think. It’s a fine line, I guess, between being too aggressive and raising people’s hackles to the point where they won’t listen to you at all, no matter how valid your point, and being enough of a milksop in your objection that you’re easily dismissed.

Update: There’s a good piece about the “spread the word” campaign today in the Chicago Tribune.
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On a related note, waaaay back in June, I posted this about sending a few letters out to creators and publishers of some comics about their use of retard/retarded. I’ve continued to do this here and there, with varying degrees of success (I’m still waiting to hear from Jon Stewart, among others, who had a perfect opportunity on Monday’s show to talk about the usage when his guest brought up the president’s “Special Olympics” comment).  But in the post linked to above, I got a great response from Paul Levitz, the president of DC Comics, about “correcting the collected edition,” which I’m happy to say was not just smoke being blown up my nether region. I had a chance to see the hardcover collection the other day at BCC, and that change was indeed made, so instead of saying “knuckle-dragging retards” it now reads “knuckle-dragging Neanderthals” which not only makes more sense in the story but also means that someday Archer and I can read what was otherwise a pretty great Superman story without either of us having to cringe when we get to that page. I can’t necessarily take all the credit for the change, as I don’t know how many other complaints they may have received, but I’m damn glad it was.

And I guess it shows how no matter how insignificant the action, it’s possible that your voice will be heard and that change — even if it’s slow as molasses — can occur. This also means I need to stop this post now before I get even more horrifyingly saccharine.