Also known as Carnival. Boy, do I hate that!
Ahead of me lies almost one week of madness and - since I am living in Aachen -
I am in one of its epicentres. This Thursday (referred to as "Weiberfastnacht"
or "Fettdonnerstag" which is "mardi gras" in French) it all begins. At 10 in
the morning I already heard the first beer-corpses stumbling and yelling around
town. Each carnival session (and that's a scary figure), several hundred people
have to be reanimated by the ambulance due to excessive alcohol consumption. I
really hope this year's figures will hit a new all-time high. I have some hope
since temperatures are close to freezing so maybe that'll help a little.
Too bad I can't really escape it. My appartment is in the geographical centre
of Aachen, between the cathedral and the old town hall. The big carnival tent
is erected below my windows and in a couple of hours I'll be tormented by
carnival music.
If you think of Carnival as something happening in Venice or Rio, don't think
any farther. German Carnival bears no ressemblance to that. It's an event
without even a fraction of style or brain.
I'm sensitized to it because I my autistic son is also, technically, retarded. I see nothing about him that's worthy of being the archetype for a slur. He's perfectly wonderful, thank you very much.
Retarded means you have mental or physical development that lags relative to the norm. This would include just about everyone in some way. Einstein was reported to have poor language skills as a child, for example.
Re:The word is Retarded
ethan on 2004-02-19T15:56:46
I'm sensitized to it because I my autistic son is also, technically, retarded. I see nothing about him that's worthy of being the archetype for a slur. He's perfectly wonderful, thank you very much.
It should have become obvious that I was not talking about the truly handicapped. I was talking about the phenomenon of mass degradation of brain that clearly manifests below my windows in this second.
So did I mean to insult autistics? No. Did I mean to insult those participants in carnival who crawl along the streets after a couple of hours because their legs can't carry them any longer? Yes, very much so.
Retarded means you have mental or physical development that lags relative to the norm. This would include just about everyone in some way. Einstein was reported to have poor language skills as a child, for example.
"Retarded" is an insult when it refers to people who show the behaviour of retarded people (in one way or the other) although they are totally ok from a medical point of view. Since this is unpardonable I am not going to take anything back.Re:The word is Retarded
jordan on 2004-02-19T17:36:55
"Retarded" is an insult when it refers to people who show the behaviour of retarded people (in one way or the other) although they are totally ok from a medical point of view. Since this is unpardonable I am not going to take anything back.
Look, you can use whatever words you want, in whatever way you want. Don't "take it back", just keep being insensitive, if that's what you prefer. But, I don't have to like it.
There are parents I know who insist that their autistic children not be referred to as retarded, even though they are very clearly both autistic and retarded. I believe it's because of the stigma that's been associated with the words 'retard' and 'retarded'.
Don't you see how the word retarded has become stigmatized? Do you think it's, just possibly, because people so carelessly use it as an insult?
If you use a term that refers to a disability as an insult, you are implicitly insulting those who have the disability. If you can't see that, then I suspect we have no room for further discussion.
I don't think you meant any malice by doing it, but I do think it is careless on your part and I thought I'd point it out. I lot of evil things are done through carelessness.
