On November 17, 2009, Senators Barbara Mikulski (D-MD) and Michael Enzi (R-WY) introduced a bill they named Rosa’s Law that would replace the phrase “mental retardation” with “intellectual disability” in all Federal policy references (see the press release here).

This development follows the protests around the word “retard” repeated in the 2008 film Tropic Thunder and a campaign by the Special Olympics to get people to stop using “the R-word.” A few months earlier, in July 2009, Little People of America called on the Federal Communications Commission to ban use of the word “midget.”

The request followed an episode of Celebrity Apprentice on NBC, called "Jesse James and the Midgets," that LPA found demeaning. Language is political. And political correctness around words is not new. There have always been offensive epithets for ethnic groups and nonconforming individuals.