Dear Lord. You can't be serious.

Dear Sarah Palin,

Are you serious? I don't believe you are. Which I think makes you worse. You are forcing me, once again, to take out my Special Needs Mom Soap Box (it's getting a lot of use!).

Listen, I sort of defended you for taking your kid with you on the road. What I will object to and continue to object to are two things: 1) making your child a public figure without his consent, and 2) acting as if the rate at which your child hits developmental milestones is some kind of moral merit badge for you.

Now it would be lovely if Rahm Emanuel talked like an actual grown-up in the workplace (does he "call" the chair he wants at a meeting, too?). I defended the use of "retarded" as a non-evaluative descriptive term, but not the way Emanuel used it (which was, to put it mildly, evaluative). However, I do believe it is something of a dead metaphor. If Emanuel had actually, intentionally, singled out a disabled person (or the disabled community) for actual intentional ridicule, he probably should be fired. Or severely reprimanded.

But he didn't. I know he didn't. You know damn well he didn't. Just as I don't when I use dumb, or lame, or idiot, or stupid, or moron, etc.

Retarded is of more recent insult vintage than those, but most people use the word without ever consciously entertaining a concept of a cognitively disabled person.

Have you reduced me to agreeing with NRO?

I think Governor Palin and Professor Arkes et al. are reading too much into Rahm Emanuel's "f***ing retarded" outburst. His use of "retarded" has no more connection to people with Down Syndrome and other forms of retardation than his constant use of the F word refers to the act of coitus. "Moron," imbecile," and "idiot" used to be terms used by psychology to denote different gradations of retardation, but now we just use them as epithets, and that's obviously how he was using "retarded." Emanuel is a vulgar jerk, but can't conservatives, at least, refrain from grievance-mongering and hair-trigger offense-taking? I realize pouncing on him is payback for all the stuff the Left does to us, but, really, someone has got to be a grown-up in this country, and conservatives are the only candidates left. (h/t Andrew Sullivan)

(Well, at least I don't agree with his last sentence. Phew!)

You are doing this merely to re-demonstrate that you have a special needs child. And we are again to be reminded of how amazing you are, that you had such a child. What a hero you are. What an inspiration. And that the Democrats, presumably, don't care about such children.

If you want to toot your own horn, have at it. But using your kid as an emotional prop, and being emotionally manipulative with faux outrage? Cut it out.