I cringe at excessive political correctness in the media, but something I saw in last Saturday’s edition of the Star newspaper made me wish the editors could have been a little more PC. In the World section, there was an article from the Straits Times (Singapore) and the Asia News Network with the following headline:
Armpit sniffer gets 14 years
Yeah, that’s weird, but there’s nothing wrong with it. No, it was the standfirst that really got my attention:
Mild retard will also be caned
Like I said, I’m no cheerleader for political correctness. But I’m kind of surprised that the newspapers over here are still referring to the mentally challenged (or whatever the heck they’re supposed to be called now) as retards. Sure, it’s probably shorter than all or most of the hyphenated PC alternatives. But still. Yeesh. What’s next, an article about negroes?
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There was an episode in CSI:Vegas where a suspect called a mentally-challenged murdered victim a “retard” and then Grissom said that the definition of “retard” was “to be held back” and mentions that he (the suspect) was to be “held back” in prison.