Best Editorial Of The Year

From the Denver Post: What's the big deal about using the word "retard"?
A lot of people are talking about the movie "Tropic Thunder." One of the reasons that it is being talked about is that the characters use the term "retard" over and over. They use it the same way that kids do all the time, to jokingly insult one another. The people who made the movie, DreamWorks and Paramount, and many of the critics who have reviewed it, say that the term is being used by characters who are dumb and shallow themselves. You see, we are supposed to get the joke that it is only the dumb and shallow people who use a term that means dumb and shallow. My dad tells me that this is called "irony." So, what's the big deal? Let me try to explain. I am a 26-year-old man with Down Syndrome. I am very lucky. Even though I was born with this intellectual disability, I do pretty well and have a good life. I live and work in the community. I count as friends the people I went to school with and the people I meet in my job. Every day I get closer to living a life like yours.
I am a Global Messenger for Special Olympics and make speeches to people all over the country. I once spoke to over 10,000 people at the Richmond Coliseum. I realize that I am a voice for other people with intellectual disabilities who cannot easily speak for themselves. I thank God that he gave me this chance to be someone's voice. So, what's wrong with "retard"? I can only tell you what it means to me and people like me when we hear it. It means that the rest of you are excluding us from your group. We are something that is not like you and something that none of you would ever want to be. We are something outside the "in" group. We are someone that is not your kind.   
I want you to know that it hurts to be left out here, alone. Nothing scares me as much as feeling all alone in a world that moves so much faster than I do. You don't mean to make me feel that way. In fact, like I say in some of my speeches, "I have always depended on the kindness of strangers," and it works out OK most of the time. Still, it hurts and scares me when I am the only person with intellectual disabilities on the bus and young people start making "retard" jokes or references. Please put yourself on that bus and fill the bus with people who are different from you. Imagine that they start making jokes using a term that describes you. It hurts and it is scary.
That is why using "retard" is a big deal to people like me. John Franklin Stephens is a Special Olympics Virginia athlete and Global Messenger who lives in Fairfax, Va.
Read more: Using the word "retard" to describe me hurts - The Denver Post http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_10351963?source=pop#ixzz2atvEVM1u
As someone who works with the special education population and have done so for over 30 years, I appreciate what this man is saying.
It's too bad that people can't say "nigger" without repercussions but they can throw the word "retard" out and people think it's either an insult or funny.  The two words are both hateful, but one is accepted and the other is not.
Why?