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I suppose I could. I was going for the "Tropic Thunder" line. But really, political correctness? Has anyone ever called an actually mentally handicapped person "retarded" in the past thirty years?


The point isn't to just not call a 'mentally handicapped' person by a slur. It's to prevent the stereotyping of a whole class of people by comparing them to someone doing something wrong or unintelligent. In "Paypal went full retard", what you're really saying is that Paypal did something that is so wrong that only a mentally challenged person would do that, which promotes a stereotype that mentally challenged people do bad things.

By the way, the euphemism treadmill of this subject has proceeded to the point where "mentally handicapped" and "mentally challenged" are also now politically-incorrect. The preferred term is now "intellectually disabled" or "learning disabled" (which to me is far more insulting than "mentally retarded", from a literal perspective, but less evasive than "developmentally delayed").


Probably 1000x in the last 30 seconds. There's a lot of people.


I got that you were going for a "Tropic Thunder" ref, but it doesn't fit. It sounds like you're saying ebay is stupid, but the TT is satirizing actors pretending to be stupid. And, TT gets away with the bit because it pushes PC-ness further towards not shitting on mentally disabled folks. Mayhaps it should, but slang use of the word "retarded" doesn't automatically offend me. I just don't think your use worked.


yes, they have.




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