WEDNESDAY, APRIL 1, 2026
Also, return of the whales: For some reason, the New York Times republished the article in yesterday's print editions, right on page A2.
Originally, it seems to have appeared all the way back on February 5. Yesterday morning, the report by Dan Barry was back! Headline included, it started like this:
TIMES INSIDER
How Do You Write About a Slur?
In reporting on the resurgence of a word long regarded as a slur, we faced a challenge: Could we write about the inappropriate term—employed recently by, among others, the president of the United States—without using it?
Even here, in this Times Insider piece exploring that challenge, we again face a difficult question. How do we write about writing about a word that should be avoided?
The word is “retarded,” and it has been understood to be a slur against people with intellectual disabilities for nearly two generations. This is not news.
What is news is that after a steady decline in its usage, following a national campaign and federal legislation, the word has made a defiant comeback in some circles, in part because of its use by people of prominence.
We're not sure we would have regarded the word in question as "a slur." That said, we certainly would never have used the word in question as an insult—and, like almost everyone else, we knew that other formulations were now regarded as less insulting, less hurtful.
Based on three or four years of watching the Fox News Channel, we've also learned that certain people enjoy the practice of dishing such insults and using such words. A familiar name was there in the list when Barry named some recent users:
(continuing directly)
In recent months the word has been resurrected by Elon Musk, the musician Kid Rock and the Fox News personality Greg Gutfeld. In a post on Truth Social in November, President Trump called Gov. Tim Walz of Minnesota “seriously retarded,” and last month Harmeet K. Dhillon, the official overseeing the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, used “retards” in a social media post. I found this particularly striking, since the division’s responsibilities include protecting the rights of people with disabilities.
I have occasionally written about intellectual disabilities... I remember the word being bandied about in the schoolyards of my childhood in the early 1970s, particularly by bullies. Even then, many children avoided it; too hurtful.
Even then, children in Iowa avoided the term. Today, on Fox, not so much!
Barry continued along from there—but sure enough, Greg Gutfeld was listed among the practitioners. Incredibly, Barry even ended up writing this about an earlier report about this same topic:
We then sat down to write, only to grapple with a few challenges: When, how and how often should we use the word in a piece exploring its power to offend?
We did not want to simply paraphrase what Mr. Trump or Ms. Dhillon had written. We also quoted the podcaster Joe Rogan and Kid Rock to demonstrate the seemingly gleeful celebration of the word’s resurgence in some quarters. Mr. Rogan declared the word’s return “one of the great culture victories.”
Say what? Joe Rogan once declared the word's resurgence to be “one of the great culture victories?" As a courtesy, we're going to assume that whatever it is he actually said, he had somehow been misunderstood.
Sadly, also this:
There are few ways to give offense which aren't actively relished by Gutfeld, who we regard as one the genuine "Unrecognizables" of the modern incel-adjacent, "conservative insult" era.
For whatever reason, his desire to insult liberal women is one of the impulses he's sent out to satisfy each night at 10 o'clock Eastern. His gruesome loathing of women seems to be obvious—and sure enough:
Last Friday night, during his handful of opening jokes, there he went again!
GUTFELD (3/27/26): Finally, a forty-foot whale washed up on a New York beach.
Don't worry, though. The whale's next-of-kin have already been notified.
PHOTO: The women of The View
AUDIENCE: Laughter, hooting, applause
In recent weeks, we've told you it seemed that he had been told to surrender this pitiful nightly pleasure. Last Friday night, the pleasure was back—and then, on Monday night, he decided to do it again:
GUTFELD (3/30/26): To aid the war effort in the gulf, the U.S. is considering sending SEAL Team 6.
And if that doesn't work, they might even send in Whale Team 4.
PHOTO: The women of The View
AUDIENCE: Applause, cheering
Suzanne Scott sends him out to do this every night. To our ear, the cheering rings out like a fire bell in the night.
For the record, there is no insulting premise too stupid or too tired to please this kumquat's audience. In particular, there is no way to reassert male dominance that his tortured mind won't employ.
It isn't just the nightly return to braindead comparisons of the women of The View to horses and cows, to hippos and pigs, and to whales and generic "livestock." It's also the inane jokes about that time of the month, about the way women (and Asian-Americans) don't know how to drive, about how boring women's sports are, and even to pathetic displays like this:
GUTFELD (3/30/26): Bill Maher is getting the Mark Twain Award for humor.
Big deal! I'm getting the Shania Twain Award for being most likely to bang Shania Twain.
Sad! The next joke was the joke about the 40-foot whale.
(To his credit, he has stopped asking if Hunter Biden has started "banging" or "[BLEEP]ing" his mother, first lady Jill Biden. Back in 2024, we saw him go there three separate times. Producers let the word "banging" slither through, bleeped the more challenging term.)
He still likes to say that Taylor Swift is only a 5 or a 6. (Sad!) In such ways, a 61-year-old man who could apparently use some help is determined to set an ugly, stupid, braindead example for younger men of assorted ages. In fairness, the pay is good.
Final point:
High-end Blue America has completely accepted the braindead insults this fellow directs at women. Among our various tribal shortcomings, we Blues don't have a recognizable sexual politics, and we never have.