You definitely have a point, but the ethics of “You and I are doing the same thing, but I’m doing it for the right reasons, and without other information I’m just going to guess that you’re doing it for the wrong reasons, therefore I am a good person and you are not a good person.” are as shaky as they are tempting.

One of the big problems of going down that road is that the relative difficulty people have with communicating their intentions varies very widely, not to mention the methods with which they are familiar/comforable. Somebody might be doing something for the right reasons and just not be communicating it to you in a way you understand. Comdemnnig them for that leans into a form of either elitism or xenophobia.

Part of training ourselves to read things closely is to be able to bridge the gap in facility and method of communication — to get better at interpreting. Although intention proves to be a bit of a sticky wicket.

But when it comes to people who are just sort of “out there” and whom we don’t even know, let alone talk with personally, making assumptions like this, even when it’s correct, probably does more harm than good.

If there’s a good reason to do something, and people are doing that thing, I would rather spread the word about the good reason than insist than those with bad intentions just stop. Although I confess I will do the latter from time to time.

And my primary concern in thinking about Retarded Policeman was that there may not be any good reason.

Having looked at it in more depth, I think there are a bunch of good reasons, and I’m very glad Mediocre Films made this series.

Part of accepting this, and maybe the hard part for some of the viewers, is that I had a hard time admitting to myself that I could really believe that a Down Syndrome patient could be this self-aware and interactive. Overcoming my own prejudice was the hard part.

Once my own biases were acknowledged (at least to myself), I had to admit that this show is at least as funny as anything that Ben Stiller has ever done.

Another objection, though, is that I don’t think that we who analyze our reactions to this are the majority viewers. It’s more likely that I would never watch this because it makes me uncomfortable, and the people who did watch were the ones who are comfortable with the idea of calling people retarded.

I suppose that Richard Pryor had to face similar criticism when he started the widespread reclamation of the word nigger by the black community. Josh, by referring to himself as retarded, has taken away the power of that word from anyone else.

Wow. It’s contagious.
Now I’m overthinking it, too.