Reply #126: I'm sympathetic, but can't agree here.

[DirkGently]

And first off, I do recognize and appreciate that the OP is a polite, non-authoritarian request. It's a thoughtful, reasonable statement calling for empathy with which I don't agree for the reasons below:

Words have flexible, evolving meanings, and meanings in context, and we can't continually bland down our language based on an academic understanding of the former meanings of words, or their possible or tenuous connection to an unrelated party who might therefore be offended.

"Republican whacko" is not commonly understood to be a slur on both Republicans and those with mental illness. Various words given as examples of slurs toward the mentally ill have evolved entirely separate meanings. "Daft," for example, has a literal definition that includes "silly" or "stupid."

This is my objection to most pleas for politically correct terminology. Beyond outright slurs -- terms traditionally used to attack and incite hatred toward a particular group -- proposing to ban or discourage words on the idea that they might offend someone against whom the words are not even directed, or based on a rigid or technical definition that ignores context goes too far. It becomes an academic exercise to find reasons to be offended and reasons to (even politely) try to dictate what others may say.

I agree with the general principle that slurs and namecalling are a low form of discourse, but not that they all constitute some form of bigotry. I think we all are sympathetic to, for example, the intellectually challenged among us. Not everyone is "above average" like the children in Lake Wobegone. But must we sweep the infintely useful "moron" and "idiot" from our vocabularies to avoid "anti stupid bigotry?" These were, as far as I know, terms of art for real and unfortunate states of mental incapacity which are neither amusing nor a justified basis for belittling or disliking someone. They're not dirty words invented to attack those the terms really apply to, and they're not USED that way.

I saw someone here not long ago huffily announcing their "unrec" for the "use of the 'R' word" by someone quoted in the OP. I had to scratch my head and go back until I realized "Retarded" -- another real term of art -- was the word in question. I can see that a little more easily, given that the word is still understood to be an actual slur when directed at someone with an intellectual disability. But I wonder how many doctors earnestly discussing "mental retardation" have been rebuked by the well-meaning but holier-than-thou now that the "R word" is on the list of Bad Words? That list becomes diluted and less meaningful the longer it becomes.

We're going to waste a lot of time and outrage if we're going to extend the same taboos reserved for the epithets associated with hatred and violence to any comparison made to any form of human frailty. Will the obese object to derisively calling something "bloated?" Do we abuse the chronically ill when we call something "sick?"

I also think the amateur psychology we engage in as part of political discourse and rhetoric is both important and well understood to be disconnected from any type of malevolence for those literally suffering from mental illness. No one is exptessing contempt for the mentally ill calling Sharron Angle or Glenn Beck "batty" "nutty" "crazy" "certifiable" "fruitloops" who belong in "a padded room." It may be uncivil to do that, but these people and their actions go a bit beyond the "absurd." But no one is thinking (or implying) that someone with a diagnosed illness is a justified object of contempt. We can't stretch to make words mean something they don't in ORDER to take offense.

And the negative connotation associated with mental illness is not necessarily bigtory. Mental illness is in fact, a bad thing. "Bigotry" would be treating the mentally ill as bad people, which is not the same. We can be sympathetic to mental or cognitive or psychological ailment, without pretending that it would be okay for the American public to listen to the advice of, or vote into office, someone suffering from such a condition, or acting like they do.

I don't see an alternative for the need to rhetorically AND literally question the sanity and / or intellectual capacity of public figures. Someone who is genuinely mentally ill still needs us to call out Michele Bachmann for being "batcrap crazy" when she suggests the U.S. Census just might be a scheme to put people in "Japanese internment camps." We assume her brand of "crazy" is knowing and deliberate, but there just is not a better way to explain what she's doing than be questioning her sanity, figuratively and perhaps literally as well.

So my thought is that first, we know what we mean, and no one's advocating abuse or denigration of the mentally ill when we use these terms. We're not harkening back to days in which the mentally ill were tortured and imprisoned with a sense of approval. These are not epithets used to incite hatred

Second, there's a point where the rhetoric and armchair psychology may merge into a legitimate warning. Is Glenn Beck neurotic? Psychotic? A megalomanic? A sociopath? Borderline personality disorder? It's actually quite possible. If not, he's acting like he is and that ought to be recognized. Maybe it's not actually funny, come to think of it, but I think it's important and I don't think it's bigotry.

(Just my opinion, offered respectfully and free from overheated rhetorical device).