"illegals" and "retard" = two of the most gramatically- and senselessly-abused words now

[alp227]

For the past week, I've noticed that the words "illegal" and "retarded" have been perverted beyond their normal usage to defame certain groups of people. Specifically, "illegals" is used to enrage conservatives, racists, rednecks, teabaggers, etc. when referring to illegal immigrants, those immigrants who've passed our border without permission. Media Matters found that Fox News often uses "illegals" as shorthand. We all know damn well that's not just innocent on-screen text laziness given how Fox employs such airheads like Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, and Sarah Palin and serves as a 24/7 infomercial channel for the GOP. If you remember that horrible novelty song "Illegals In My Yard", promoted by Human Events back in December, you'll find how that word can easily be used as race-baiting. Because it'd be much harder albeit more sensitive and gramatically correct to sing "day laborers in my yard" or "undocumented workers in my yard" with "feliz navidad", right?

"Retard", normally an innocent verb to describe the slowing down of a process (think "flame retardant"), has become a perjorative noun to describe people with developmental delay or mental retardation, however you wanna call it. Recently, some groups have come out wanting to remove variants of "retard" from medical/government publications citing the derogatory nature of that word.

Sources:

For "illegals", Media Matters for America report "Why does Fox choose to use loaded term 'illegals'?" Think Progress blog entry "New right-wing Christmas carol: ‘Illegals in my Yard.’".

For "retard": "". The Washington Post: Feb. 5. See also editorials in the same newspaper: "The case against banning the word 'retard'" and "The bigotry behind the word 'retard'".

So...illegals and retard, two words that are often used both gramatically AND politically incorrectly!

[msongs]

1. "developmentally delayed" is a nicer sounding term. nt

[Yurovsky]

2. Make it illegal to use the word retard...

2 birds, 1 stone kinda thing...

[MellowDem]

3. Idiot, stupid...

etc. used to have meanings different from today. Retard has shifted into that category over time. "Illegals" is simply a shortening of an overly long term, as many words are. I don't think it is intentionally shortened to dehumanize. Perhaps Fox News has decided to use it more often for their own nefarious purposes, but the word itself is not offensive in and of itself without context. I usually say "illegal immigrants" the first time and then just "illegals" after that because it's quite a long word to keep saying over and over.

[Biker13]

4. Exactly. nt