Flack for Flacco After Poor Word Choice

The NFL's decision to bring the Super Bowl to the New York metro area next year was expected to generate controversy for being the first cold weather, outdoor championship game. But the choice of words a football star used to describe his feelings on the outdoor game have him eating crow, and has some fans switching loyalties.

When asked by a Denver-based reporter his opinion of the Super Bowl being played next year in New York, Baltimore Ravens quarterback Joe Flacco said in a Monday news conference, “I think it’s retarded.”

The R Word is Never Acceptable

The great U.S. Supreme Court Justice and American civil rights hero Thurgood Marshall once wrote that the plight of persons with developmental disabilities was not unlike a “regime of state-mandated segregation…that in its virulence and bigotry rivaled, and indeed paralleled, the worst excesses of Jim Crow.”
Despite progress, though, it is undeniable that Americans with developmental disabilities still remain second-class citizens in the eyes of the law and our fellow human beings. Those with developmental disabilities are rarely heard from in our popular culture or social policy or political dialogue. Part of this tragic injustice is the ridicule of the developmentally disabled, and there is no greater symbolic gesture of this ridicule than the accepted use of the word “retarded” in day-to-day speech.

California Legislators Pass Bill to Drop 'R' Word

SACRAMENTO -- A bill awaiting Gov. Jerry Brown's signature won't change any services, rights or responsibilities in state law. But to supporters, the bill's changes are critical: It would drop the words "mental retardation" and "mentally retarded" from state regulations and publications.
The terms, which supporters of the bill say are outdated and offensive, would be replaced by "intellectual disability" and "person with an intellectual disability." The legislation, by Sen. Fran Pavley, D-Santa Monica, passed unanimously in both the state Assembly and Senate last week.

Student Honored for Campaign Against 'R-Word'

BEDFORD, Texas -- Two years ago, Katie Pullano stood up to a teacher who used an offensive word during class.
"A teacher in the seventh grade said that something a student had done was retarded," said Pullano, a ninth-grader at Harwood Junior High School. "I told her the connotation of the word doesn't come off right. She shouldn't be teaching it to teens."
An argument ensued but, Pullano said, the teacher eventually accepted her position and respected her objection.

Read more here: http://www.star-telegram.com/2012/05/20/3973833/bedford-ninth-grader-honored-for.html#storylink=cpy