Look, people, I'm old, really old, old enough to remember when "retarded" was the polite word that took the place of the pejorative "stupid," applied to children who were having a lot of trouble with school work. It was the first step on the way to differentiating things like dyslexia, autism, and other barriers to learning. It's only a pejorative to people who feel guilty for using it as such in middle school. Grow up.
I'm old enough to remember a lot of other words in colloquial English that were shorthand for groups of people that the SJWs on DU consider horrible, life threatening pejoratives.
I also notice these great warriors against colloquial English are always offended on the behalf of someone else who hasn't said s/he is offended, the SJWs apparently considering themselves the untiring champions of people out there who are just too stupid to know they've been mocked. I can tell them as a native born Florida Cracker, I am more offended by that than I am the word "cracker."
Now there are a few words that truly do offend people and I do avoid using them, calling people what they prefer to be called, which is usually their names.
Now I've used enough words in this post to give most of them serious cases of the Victorian Bowdlerist swoons and I am sure this post will be hidden. Go ahead, do your worst, some hides are definitely worth it, especially when they tend to increase readership.
Just realize that some day, when you are an elder, your language will be criticized by the young who think that the easy job of making war on words is vastly preferable to getting down in the mud to make war on real injustice.
That is all.
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