People with mentally disabled loved ones shouldn’t be picketing Tropic Thunder for pointing this out; they should be buying extra tickets and focusing their anger on the movies it is attacking. But that wouldn’t fit the model of social change their self-appointed representatives are pursuing.
So true. Of course, they were too retarded to think of that…
None of this is to suggest that it is all right to actually call anyone a “retard” (though it must be admitted that the temptation is strong whenever one sees adult human beings picketing a cinema for any reason) in a serious, interpersonal context.
But satirists such as Mr. Stiller must be given special latitude — since, by necessity, their art requires that they use language we would otherwise find inappropriate.
We should not tolerate our popular culture being circumscribed by the sensitivities of those whose appreciation of free speech is — how shall we put it politely? — exceptional.
