How Insulting

Sarah Palin wants Rahm Emanuel fired for privately calling liberal activists, "f---ing retarded."

He has since apologized.

Perhaps we should no longer read Shakespeare because he let MacBeth say that life is a "tale told by an idiot".

For those who wish to generated Elizabethan insults, see here.

Idiot was the old fashioned insult. Retarded was introduced as a nice word. But then it got taken over as an insult. "Special" got recruited as a nice word. But now that is used as an insult too.

The term "mental retardation" is a diagnostic term denoting the group of disconnected categories of mental functioning such as "idiot", "imbecile", and "moron" derived from early IQ tests, which acquired pejorative connotations in popular discourse. The term "mental retardation" acquired pejorative and shameful connotations over the last few decades due to the use of "retarded" as an insult.

I guess I'm tired

of people getting fired

and almost hung

for slips of the tongue.