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Community Corner

The Mom Spot: Let's Talk About Respect

Words matter. I don't know any adult who can't remember a time when they would have preferred to have been physically hit then have had certain words hurled at them.

 

In all honesty if you haven’t found some of the public and political discourse surrounding Rush Limbaugh and Georgetown Law Student Sandra Fluke over the past few weeks disturbing then you probably haven’t been listening very carefully (or you live somewhere without TV, radio or the Internet, which means you aren’t reading this).

As a woman some of the language and the discourse has stunned me and angered me. As the mother of a little girl it has saddened me. I never thought battles, some of which were fought and one before I was born, would be being refought with such vigor during my daughter’s lifetime.

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I’m not going to get into the issues in this column – as tempting as it might be to climb onto that soapbox. I am however going to clamber onto another one – words matter.

Words matter a whole lot. The old playground adage of “sticks and stones may break my bones but words will never hurt me” is false. I don’t know any adult who can’t remember a time when they would have preferred to have been physically hit then have had certain words hurled at them.

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It’s a lesson that more adults should reflect on because right now the lesson we’re teaching our children is that it’s perfectly OK to denigrate, humiliate and eviscerate people with our words. The worst is that often the blame is laid at the listener’s feet for hearing insult rather than at the speakers for what they choose to say.

If you take offense you’re too sensitive, you’re too politically correct, you’re trampling on someone’s First Amendment rights. The better idea is that the people start thinking before they speak and ask themselves how they would feel if that was being said about someone they love – their daughter, mother, son, father, spouse.

I think part of the reason the language of the past few weeks has gotten so much attention is because the woman it was directed at doesn’t fit the stereotype of the words. She’s what most of us want to raise our daughters to become – poised, intelligent, educated, articulate and willing to stand up for what she believes in.

What always amazes me is that other harmful words get a pass – or if not a complete pass, certainly far less outrage than others.

Just a little over two years ago Rush Limbaugh referenced a meeting between Tim Shriver, the CEO of Special Olympics, other advocates and the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel as “a retard summit.” Ironically that meeting between Emanuel and Shriver was a result of Emanuel’s own use of the word.

The news coverage at that time didn’t focus as much on the degrading language Rush used but instead concentrated on how Sarah Palin would react. After all she called Emanuel on the carpet for what he said, would she do the same to Limbaugh?

Why was the same disgust and outrage not apparent then as is focused on Limbaugh now?

Aren’t we all evolved and intelligent enough to not do this anymore? Aren’t we all intelligent enough not to use a medical diagnosis as an insult? If you want to call someone foolish then call them foolish; if you want to call someone ridiculous then call them ridiculous; if you want to call them stupid then call the stupid, but using retard as a substitute for those words is demeaning to those for whom mental retardation is a medical diagnosis.

And anyone who knows her can tell you, the last words that apply to Nikki are foolish or stupid.

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