> >I just realized I used the word "lameness" in my dismissal of certain
left
> >magazines. Unfortunate in any context, but given the disability thread,
> >quite stupid and insensitive. I apologize.
>
> Shows how ingrained it is in the culture doesn't it.
> Like racism, it takes a while to root out slurs.
I don't buy that "lame" is a slur in the same way that "retard" or "gimp" would be, since the latter have a history of use as pejoratives, while "lame" was traditionally a colloquial alternative to "disabled" and usually applied not to humans but to hurt animals. When I hear the word "lame", I think mostly of its use applied to hurt horses. So a lame magazine in modern slang is a hurt magazine.
Now, one can argue that implying that anything hurt or below potential is not good is by implication a slur on disabled people, but that it broadening from abstract description to people specifically. The problem with applying the exact same tolerance language rules around civil rights to disability is that by definition, disabled people have problems that limit their abilities in aspects of their life -- the ADA definition in fact. But if any attack on limitations in general -- lameness as the example -- is understood as a slur on individuals, then that does create a PC-like minefield of language.
-- Nathan Newman