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.

The organization Autism Speaks has released a video entitled “I am Autism” purporting to show how autism devastates individuals and families. The video harmfully misrepresents autism and the autism community. Rather than asking for understanding, services or rights for people with autism, “I am Autism” attacks the dignity of people on the autism spectrum.

We established the Disability & Media Alliance Project (D-MAP) to work in alliance with the media industry to change inaccurate public perceptions of disability and replace them with informed and realistic stories and images. We want to broaden the range of popular ideas about disability to go beyond the usual suspects: condescending stares for tragic lives on the one extreme, and admiring awe for superhuman transcendence of obstacles on the other. People with disabilities are neither inspirational heroes nor social parasites, neither courageous underdogs nor charity cases. We are ordinary people with ordinary and highly varied lives. Like everyone else, we'd like to see our lives depicted in the news and in entertainment.