More on Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder: ‘Once upon a time … There was a retard’ from:
http://www.patriciaebauer.com/2008/08/01/once-upon-a-time/

It’s just good clean fun, the studio might say, pointing out that the movie also pokes fun at racial stereotypes. It’s a sendup of old Hollywood films that trotted out able-bodied actors in disability drag, like Tom Hanks in “Forrest Gump,” Dustin Hoffman in “Rain Man” and Sean Penn in “I am Sam.” Stiller isn’t laughing at people with intellectual disabilities, I can imagine his publicist saying. He’s laughing at the way Hollywood portrays them.

But for the estimated 14.3 million Americans with cognitive disabilities and their families, such arguments may be problematic. These people share a history of segregation and exclusion, and report that what many call the “R-word” reinforces negative social attitudes just as surely as racial, ethnic and sexually oriented slurs do.

Peter V. Berns, executive director of The Arc of the United States, said yesterday that the organization would reach out to the studio in an effort to screen the film. The 140,000-member organization represents people with intellectual and developmental disabilities across the country, and its mission includes promoting and protecting their civil rights.

“What we are seeing already is a cause of great concern,” he said. “People with intellectual and developmental disabilities have had a lot of pejorative labels assigned to them over the years. I’d like to think that we as a society are getting past that, but we are seeing one after the other examples that this is not the case.”