I don’t think so - references to “fucking retarded” ideas have nothing at all to do with handicapped people, any more than they do to people who have sex.
I think they do. If you say, “That’s a retarded idea”, you’re saying “That’s an idea a retarded person would have.”, i.e., “That’s a stupid idea.” “Retarded” only has the connotation “stupid” when you’re referring to people.
I think it’s very unlikely that Rahm’s use of “fucking retarded” was intended to mean “very delayed”. Have you ever heard anyone using those words together when talking about how slow something is? He meant that the ideas were “very stupid”. And the use of the word “retarded” to mean “stupid” is by comparison to retarded people. The comparison is negative, so those people are insulted.
Note that “fucking” in this case is an intensifier, similar to “very”. It has nothing to do with sex.
I’m kind of surprised this is controversial. In American usage, “fucking retarded” has a clear meaning. I could see debating whether or not retarded people should be insulted by the usage, but it there’s no doubt that it does refer to them.
Let’s see what the word is defined as:
So, for this and to plug in the definition above, we get:
“That idea is fucking limited in intellectual development.”
We talk about developing ideas so it does not need to refer to people at all. If someone said, “Obama is a big poopyhead” one might say that statement lacks intellectual development.
Basically, “You didn’t think this fucking thing through very well.”
ug, I hate this whole discussion, I started a thread about this awhile back, the term you are looking for (thanks helpful dopers) is euphemism treadmill. if he had said Fucking Moronic it wouldnt even have registered even though moron is just an old term for retarded, same with idiotic, imbecilic, and several others.
people who cant separate the word used to describe (in this case) and idea from a group of people are imho morons themselves. (yeah I see what I did there)
You make my point. “slow or limited in intellectual or emotional development or academic progress” is referring to retarded people. Ideas don’t have intellectual or emotional development. Ideas don’t have academic progress. Saying “an idea is retarded” is making a direct association with retarded people.
Nonsense.
To be sure an idea has to be a product of an intellect.
That said I can call an idea stupid without thinking the person is stupid. Perhaps the person said something off-the-cuff without much thought or perhaps they lack expertise and miss critical elements or or perhaps they lack other knowledge you are privy to which changes things or perhaps they were lazy that day or perhaps they were drunk or perhaps they had a brain fart or perhaps they were emotional.
Whatever the case the idea can be poor while the person behind it may well be a highly intelligent person.
As such I can absolutely refer to an idea being retarded without referring to anyone or any group of people. The idea itself possesses the quality; nothing else.
As language “idea” is the noun and “retarded” is the adjective modifying that noun. It stands by itself with no need to reference people to make it work.
Niggardly is a legitimate word although few people know it’s definition so political correctness displaces ignorance. A more accurate comparison would be to refer to a poorly repaired object as being niggar-rigged. “Retarded” is working it’s way through the politically correct dictionary of polite conversation. At this point it’s use should probably generate some form of apology as a matter of protocol for anyone representing the White House.
Rahm Emanual is a horses ass with a history of presenting himself as such. This may be an opportunity for President Obama to cut him loose in favor of someone with a talent for bringing people together instead of the mafia mentality of Rahm. The way he has treated his own party members makes him unloved in his own house.
The problem with your position is that none of the definitions for “retarded” (neither the one you cited, nor any on this page, for example) describe a pejorative usage of it that does not refer to people.
Meaning can change over time, but I’ve seen no evidence that the current usage of “retarded” as an insult refers to anything other than retarded people. And Rahm’s phrase “fucking retarded” makes clear that he was using the pejorative sense.
I understand what you’re saying but I don’t really want to say that word. I feel it is a uniquely repulsive word. I know I know, I can say a lot of other things without feeling bad for it but for some reason this one makes me pause. Call it good education, bad propaganda, whatever, but I rather keep calling it the N word. That’s not to say in moments of frustration or anger I won’t whip it out, but hey, it’s my post and I’ll refer to it how I want 
You are altering the definition to serve your own preconceptions. There is a difference between “uneducated person” and “handicapped person”, and the definition explicitly refers to the former.
The word is referring to stupidity. Not any specific kind or source of stupidity, such as a physical handicap; just generic ordinary anybody-may-apply stupidity. It doesn’t refer to handicapped people any more than “That’s a tall tower” is describing the tower in reference to tall people.
Right. But the word “retarded” only means “stupid” when you’re referring to people. You’re right that when you tell somebody, “That’s a retarded idea”, you’re not saying that the person you’re talking to is mentally retarded, but you wouldn’t use the term “retarded” to refer to an idea if we didn’t already use “mentally retarded” to refer to stupid people.
There a difference between stupid people and mentally handicapped people, though. Referring to the former is not an automatic reference to the latter.
Doubtless he wanted to convey to the people who put that idea forth his low opinion of them.
Apart from whether you should belittle people at all though is the notion that this somehow has Emanuel invoking Palin’s child using that child to belittle the people he was talking to.
As noted above he could have said “moronic” or “imbecilic” and Palin would not have blinked despite these originally being words used to describe mentally handicapped people.
The point here is Palin and others co-opting the word (granted she did it for cheap political points but as mentioned above others take issue as well).
Bottom line is we need a word (or words) to describe the condition of being mentally handicapped. Being mentally handicapped is an undesirable trait so people will use those words to belittle others. No matter what word you choose though people will glom on to it to throw at others.
But when referring to a person, “retarded” means mentally handicapped.
So if I referred to a particularly bad repair job as “Polack engineering” that would be fine, since I am referring to the job and not the ethnic group?
I’m not distinguishing among different kinds of retarded people. That’s not important to my point that the pejorative sense of “retarded” refers to people.
Yes, you’re making my point–“retarded” refers to people. And when the word is used in an insulting way, those people who are associated with the word could very well be insulted.
I have no disagreements with this.
If you said that, you’d be totally D’abled.
“Retarded” refers to stupid people. As people figured out that there was a medical reason for some people to be stupid, the label “retarded”, among others, was hung on the specific subgroup of stupid people that had a medical excuse for it. Over time most of the other terms for this have reverted to their original purely pejorative/descriptive use; retarded is still commonly used to describe the handicapped, but it remains an adjective that was co-opted for this use, not created for it.
Now, if you were complaining about the similar word “retard”, then you would be right, because as far as I can tell that formulation does specifically and exclusively refer to handicapped people.
Yes, that very nice, and completely irrelevant to my point. It doesn’t matter what the past usages were, or what non-insulting usages are now–in current American usage, when “retarded” is used pejoratively (as it was in this case) it is referring to people.