Well, Chris Burke is especially high functioning.
My problem with all of this is that I don’t know what Sarah Palin wants. She seems to go back and forth betweening protecting Trig (which I agree with) and telling us what we should think about people with Down Syndrome (which I don’t agree with).
The most popular radio show for years in DC was “The Don and Mike Show.” Chris Burke was a guest fairly often and they seemed to have fun with him. He also seemed to be incredibly self-aware about his disability. They teased him, but everyone seemed in on the joke.
At the same time, when they thought a caller was stupid, they would play a clip of Chris Burke singing “Poison Ivy.”
Family Guy crosses every line there is - racial, religious, you name it. It’s had characters dress like Aunt Jemima. It made an incredibly crass joke about abortion.
I don’t find the show terribly funny. But I also feel like we should be allowed to make jokes about everything - race, religion, disability, etc.
Is Palin saying that we can’t?
I'm not sure. It does seem she's saying we can't call liberals "retarded". And it seems she's saying that you can't bring her name up tangentially without her going off on you.
To me, she has crossed the line into politically correct whining. God knows she's been unfairly attacked, her family was dragged through the mud in disgusting and dispicable ways, and some especially vile commentators still do so on a regular basis.
But I don't think the average person is going to look at this Family Guy episode and think it is an attack on Palin, or on Down's syndrome kids, or on Trig, and so when they hear that Palin is all upset about it, it will give them a bad opinion of Palin. And to the degree Palin might have sold someone with her attack on Rahm, this will detract from it.
Already people who generally are susceptible to the argument about politically correct speech are saying Palin went too far, and made too big a deal of it.