READ THE NEWS STORY FIRST

"When I heard about it, I felt really hurt inside," said Special Olympics global messenger Dustin Plunkett. "I cannot believe a writer could write something like that. It’s the not the way that we want to be portrayed. We have feelings. We don’t like the word retard. We are people. We’re just like any other people out there. We want to be ourselves and not be discriminated against."

    Is it not a writer’s job to make people feel?  Hell most us are already sad, pathetic, retards ourselves.  Who in their right mind would chose such a lonely and unrewarding profession?  I wish I could get a job that “special people” get without even being able to spell their full name.  Well that’s enough about me.

    Ben Stiller loves to poke fun at retarded people in most of his movies anyway.  This is nothing new.  Take “There’s Something about Mary” for example number one.  The adult retarded brother is the funniest part of the movie.  Casting Owen Wilson in “Starsky and Hutch” shows that he has sympathy for special people and will even hire them when in true need of an actor.  Barbara Streisand played his fucking mother in “Meet the Annoying Jews.”  If that is not compassion for a ‘tard then I don’t what is.

    Why not spend protesting energy on something important like keeping re-re’s out of Washington DC?  Leave the hopeless alone in Hollywood and set up shop outside the Senate.  Give the people who actually matter a piece of your slightly slow mind.  Big Business, the same employers who give out greeter’s and janitor’s jobs to the mental, hand out Congressional seats like candy to make sure that no one with a fully developed sense of right and wrong can run this loony bin of a broken democracy.  Isn’t a clear sense of right and wrong the foundation of mental health?  Tell me that someone isn’t retarded when they sign their name next to “no” on a bill that would give free and proper health care to the parents, siblings, and family friends that take care of their “special people.”  I know that taking care of a handicapped person is a full time job that doesn’t pay, so why can’t these full time “employees” get the same treatment that their non-working loved ones get?

    I might be all over the place on this one, but I feel hurt inside.  Let’s all get angry, let’s all get pissed, let’s all protest.  Let’s do it for the right reason though.

    The new Ben Stiller comedy “Tropic Thunder” is attracting crowds, not only at the box office but also across the street from Mann’s Bruin Theater where the premier took place.  Protestors carried signs in objection to the liberal use of a word that offends members of the Special Olympics Committee and the American Association of People with Disabilities.

    In the movie, Stiller plays an actor who’s previous role was a character named Simple Jack that suffered from mental disabilities.  What exactly is said about the character or how he is represented is unclear, but apparently is enough to anger many people involved with the mentally handicapped.

    “I think it’s open to interpretation and that’s the great thing,” said Robert Downey Jr, who also plays in the film. “You know, if I want to protest something because it offends me that’s my right as an American, and it’s also any artist’s right to say and do whatever they wanna do.”

    In response to a private screening held between DreamWorks and the American Association of People with Disabilities, DreamWorks decided to remove some promotional material that included the word “retard.”  A spokesman for DreamWorks said that no changes would be made to the actual however.

    The Special Olympics chairman is still pushing for a boycott of the film.  “This population (special people) struggles too much with the basics to have to have to struggle against Hollywood.   We’re sending a message that this hate speech is no longer
acceptable.” 

READ THE EDITORIAL OPINION BY ALUWISHES MCFINKELSTEIN