The public's second thoughts about executing retarded people reflect second thoughts about executions in general.
"With the uproar you hear about executing retarded people in Texas and the like," Mr. Murphy said in an interview last week, "I think it's a legitimate concern wherever it's raised".
"With the uproar you hear about executing retarded people in Texas and the like," he told The New York Times in 2001, "I think it's a legitimate concern wherever it's raised".
Then we could all get serious about getting retarded.
But Americans rarely talked about guilty victims, like retarded death-row inmates.
But a lot of news articles and editorials about the case avoided using the terms "retarded" or "retardation".
I feel kind of retarded even writing about this.
The Family Guy orchestra sung and recorded a song for a sequence which showed several Quahog citizens learning and talking about Peter being declared as retarded.
It's not difficult to remember when an entire generation of not-gay people thought it was "too PC" to insist that the word "gay" not be used interchangeably with "dumb" – and lord knows my generation was equally terrible about the word "retarded".
A deleted scene showing Quahog residents singing about Peter being retarded was a reference to music from Bye Bye Birdie.
All the same, I've always been puzzled about why "mentally disabled" is preferable to "retarded".
