There's a large US campaign against the r-word, it has a pledge website:
R-word.org - Change the conversation...



Sarah Palin is behind it:
Palin's campaign against the "R-word" hits snag with Limbaugh - Yahoo! News

Rush Limbaugh won't stand for the political correctness:
CNN Political Ticker: All politics, all the time Blog Archive - Limbaugh takes heat for using ‘R’ word - Blogs from CNN.com

Obama's chief of staff got caught saying it, so a high powered delegation went to the White House to make him apologize
Rahm Takes Pledge Not to Use R-Word - Political Punch

The GOP has taken hits also:
FOXNews.com - Perry Campaign Apologizes for Using 'R' Word

What do people think of this campaign - and the general notion of political campaigns to cleanse the language ?

cYp

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I suppose in the US, banning the word "Republican" is a start.

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A country which refuses to enforce its own laws has no future.

Have people stopped saying 'flid' yet? When I was a kid at school, everyone called everyone a 'flid'. If they weren't calling them a 'gaylord'.

Never heard of "flid" before.

I presume this is a reaction to Emmanuel's use of "retard" which is a wholly accepted phrase in the US since the last time I checked. Anyway; to campaign against a word is ridiculous. Campaign against the stigma, sure! But leave the word alone!

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Every one sees what you appear to be, few really know what you are, and those few dare not oppose themselves to the opinion of the many, who have the majesty of the state to defend them.

- Niccolò Machiavelli

Ah, it's going back 25 to 30 years since I heard it last - a reference to Thalidomide. I imagine it wasn't sensitivity that led to it stopping, rather that the issue went away off the media radar and it became archaic.

I bet it will be great craic then trying to order certain medicines which use the word 'retard' to indicate that they are the slow-release version of medicine. For example, epileptics often take tablets called Tegretol. The slow-release version, in which the effects are released slowly over hours rather than in the normal version all at once into the bloodstream, are called 'Tegretol Retard'. I can just imagine people asking their doctor "I need a perscription for my epilepsy drugs. Not the normal white tegretol version, but the other sort, the em . . . other sort, the [whispers] retard ones." They could of course refer to them by their colours. The normal one is white. The retard version is . . . um . . . coloured. Oops. I guess that wouldn't be PC to use either.

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yeah... imagine.

I have a little mental wince every time I hear it being bandied about by Americans. I don't really see the harm in campaigning like this if it's done in a consciousness-raising kind of way...But then again it is being spear-headed by Palin so...

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omnia dicta fortiora, si dicta Latina

Sarah Palin's son, Trig, has Down Syndrome, so...