Rahm Apologizes, AgainWhite House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel had his meeting and in-person apologies with advocates for the disabled, and, according to their statement, they are grateful.
“We are thankful to Mr. Emanuel for meeting with us today and hearing our concerns. He sincerely apologized for his mistake and the pain it caused in our community,” the group said in a statement.
That mistake would be referring to liberals as “f—-ing retarded” — a phrase that is damaging “to the seven million people with intellectual disabilities, but also their friends, family and to all of us,” the group explained.
And you can expect Emanuel to join their campaign to end the common use of the R-word, not to mention the more vivid use Rahm made of it.
The rest is after the jump.
Statement given jointly by:
Timothy Shriver, Chairman and CEO, Special Olympics Andrew Imparato, President & CEO, American Association of People with Disabilities Peter V. Berns, CEO, The ARC Hannah Jacobs, parent and R-word advocate Julie Petty, self-advocate and former SABE president Ricardo Thornton, self-advocate and Special Olympics athlete
We came here today to meet with Rahm Emanuel and share with him our view on the importance and impact of language. We wanted to invite Mr. Emanuel and all of America to understand the collective efforts of our community to remove the words “retard” and “retarded” from everyday speech.
The R-word is polluting our language. Every day our community hears this word - in schools and workplaces, in print and in movies, on radio and television. And every day they suffer its dehumanizing effects - mockery, stigma, ridicule. This is a word that is incredibly damaging - not only to the seven million people with intellectual disabilities, but also their friends, family and to all of us.
We are thankful to Mr. Emanuel for meeting with us today and hearing our concerns. He sincerely apologized for his mistake and the pain it caused in our community.
We are happy that he will join more than 54,000 other Americans in pledging to end the use of the R-word at
www.r-word.org, and that he committed that the administration would continue to look for ways to partner with us, including examining pending legislation in Congress to remove the R word from federal law.
Our community has earned the right to be respected instead of ridiculed. We have suffered injustice for generations and we are demanding that it end.
This is another small step on the road to a country that accepts the gifts of all.
