Ordinarily, the word retard is insulting to developmentally delayed people. Not nice.
The people I just moved away from were vile. Utterly vile. Here is an example: The head of household, in her sixties, thinks it's cool to brag about the following incident. She used to walk her little dog in a neighbor's yard, where it did its business. She never cleaned it up. One day, the neighbor asked her to clean it up. She raged at him and is still very proud of scaring him back into his home, to this day. End of story. That is what she is proud of in life.
There is an official lack of affordable housing. I was truly lucky to be there. She, her family and their associates were liars, hypocrites, thieves, potheads, alcoholics, ragers, domestically violent, bullies, manipulators, filthy dirty, selfish, myopic, hardened, callous, disgusting, unsafe, unsanitary, diseased (two couch surfers), enablers to hard drug users (couch surfers), negligent, derelict, and drove drunk. I forgive anyone who uses the word retard to describe any of them, because finding the right word would be too overwhelming. I guess the right word would be sickos, but does that insult people who really are ill?
How gracious of you, on behalf of people with Mental Retardation who have actually suffered that term, to forgive those who use retard as a pejorative to describe undesirable characteristics like criminality and general indecency (btw, I have some sins of my own that need pardoning if you have the time). However, ksm was describing someone he actually believed to have some type of Developmental delay, so, yes, "not nice", I guess.
Don't get me wrong. I know ksm stirs the pot and I like to play along. Also, to the extent that he ikes to point out that too often the most strident among us insincerely use language just to elevate themselves above others or win an argument...let's just say that I either see where he is coming from or am giving him too much credit