Another Article

Didn't have a lot of time to write this weekend, so I'm posting another great article:


An Open Letter to Ben Stiller about Tropic Thunder

Imagine this:
1. You’re given tens of millions of dollars to make a major Hollywood movie.
2. You choose to put in the words: retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard retard.
3. After the movie’s release, you say “Hey, you took that out of context! If I offended anybody, I didn’t mean it.”

Sorry, Ben. You offended me. I have an 11-year old son with Down syndrome. He is a human being. He’s not a symbol or a character on TV or a joke. He is real. With feelings. Imagine that!

Jack (my son, not your Simple Jack) is my hero. He’s not perfect, and he spends more time in the principal’s office than he should. But he gets up every day of his life and works twice as hard as other kids to be able to do what kids do. He swims like
a fish, but can’t ride a bike. He reads and writes and has a great sense of humor. I love him.

His life has challenges of every kind. He deals with them. But what Jack really doesn’t need is an adult like you coming over just to kick him in the gut a little bit with that word to sell some tickets and make a joke. Thanks just the same, Ben!

I know what you’re saying. I’ve heard Sergeant Sam and the talk radio callers and the comment-posters. You’re saying “Hey, get a life! Lighten up! LOL! This is way too PC! Retard is just a word like stupid and idiot. Find something else to worry about.
The movie is just a movie! Don’t see it if you don’t want to! Retard!”

That’s what you’re saying, Ben, and all you comment-posters on the web, but this is what I’m hearing: You insist on being able to demean and verbally abuse my kid with a loaded, hateful word that conjures a special visual image and carries a sad, long history of abuse. To me, it’s like the n-word. Oh, you don’t do this directly. You just say retard around your friends to tell a joke, and in your movies and on TV and radio and on the web, when you mean “fool.” Then in a few days a kid on a play-
ground somewhere aims that word at Jack. Or Sofia. Or Hannah. But hey kids, Lighten Up! LOL!

Ben, this is all getting a little too mean for me. I thought we were all supposed to be better than this. I know the word retard didn’t start with you. Jack’s heard it before! Not that often (his classmates are great kids), but he has and what a great day it is at our house when he comes home and my husband and I try to patch those feelings back up. And believe me, Ben, our kids are smart enough to know when they’re being ridiculed. I don’t even need to tell you how it feels as a parent to watch my kid, an especially vulnerable kid, get ridiculed with that word, but “knife in the heart” should about cover it.

Our community hoped that word would go away after Something about Mary, after the get’er done comedian who mocks retard in every routine, and all the rest. But Ben, your movie is too much. Thanks to the movie and YouTube, I’m expecting Jack will hear that word on the playground when he goes back to school next week, a lot more. See, fifth graders just didn’t get the context of your movie. They just got the word and your permission to use it.

So I will stand up now, I will protest and march, with all of the disability community, and say Enough. Please Stop. Think about our kids, our brothers and sisters, our neighbors and friends with intellectual disabilities, and pick on
someone your own size next time. You say “Get a life.” Ben, get a heart. And stop hurting our kids.


Suzanne Shepherd is a member of the Board of the Down Syndrome Association of Central Texas and a mom. Jack is a fifth-grader at a local elementary school.