So. There’s a recent kerfuffle over the fact that Ann Coulter used the word “retard” to describe President Obama.
Much has been made of the fact that she used that word, which hurts the feelings of some developmentally disabled people. As someone with a special needs child who’s had family members who were mentally retarded, I go back and forth on that word. Except here’s the tough reality: when I got my first job, it was working at a school for mentally disabled teens. And even back then (the mid-’80s) we had stopped using the term “mentally retarded” because it had already taken on pejorative connotations of “stupid.” And we all pretty much acknowledged that this was a losing battle, because if you pick almost any other common epithet meaning “stupid,” including “idiot” and “moron,” they mostly all used to be clinical terms for individuals with challenges. Even “dumb” used to describe deaf people and others who had difficulty speaking.
The better attitude, in my view, and as harsh as I know it sounds, is this: tell the mentally challenged to suck it up, get a thick skin, and show that they aren’t going to let name-calling bother them. So what I would have told Tim Shriver is this: don’t chastise her for using a bad word (which is after all just a word), but rather, to tell Ann Coulter that she’s the real retard.
Because when it comes right down to it, that’s what Ann Coulter is: a f***ing retard. Not to mention a vile attention-seeking media whore.
And by the way, when I say “whore,” I must apologize to any honest working whores out there plying their trade without actually, y’know, hurting anybody. Whereas hurting people, it’s what Ann Coulter does for a living. Because I happen to know people who’ve met her, and know her, and they’ve told me that in private, she’s nothing like her media persona. That she’s even really nice and friendly. Which means her whole public image? It’s fake. She’s faking it. She’s vicious and angry just because it gets her attention and makes her money, helping her sell books, get TV and radio appearances, and speaking engagements, by feeding rage and hatred just to make money.
Making it perfectly appropriate to call her what she is: a vicious hatemongering media whore.
You know what? I’ve said I’ll vote for Obama this year, but I’ll make Mitt Romney a deal: if he will come out and publicly declare that Ann Coulter does not represent the Republican party and that she and her ilk should be shown the door and shunned forevermore by Republicans, I’ll vote for him, and every other Republican who does the same.
Because vicious retarded hatemongering whores like Ann Coulter should be shunned in polite society. F*** her.
Dean Esmay is the author of Methuselah’s Daughter. He has contributed to Dean’s World, Huffington Post, A Voice for Men, Pajamas Media. Neither left nor right wing, neither libertarian nor socialist.