Great Race on CBS - Big Brother and "Retards"

Last year on the Great Race CBS decided to bleep the word "retard" when it was used by someone on the program. You'd assume this was because they thought it was insensitive and would create a backlash by concerned viewers. You'd be right. For some reason when current contestant, Adam Jasinski, used the word retard to derogatively refer to people with autism CBS tried to deny any wrongdoing and at first refused to apologize.

In episode 2 Jasinski said that he wanted to open a hair styling business that would specialize in serving customers who have autism; Jasinski refered to these individuals as "retards". The words retard and retarded are emotionally loaded words. They are as inflammatory as racial epithets to most people who are involved in the special needs community. While mental retardation is an actual diagnosis and label, refering to people as retards is synonomous with calling them stupid, dumb, and worse. Also not all individuals with autism do not have mental retardation as well, so it perpetuates misinformation about autism when taken literally. It is a very touchy topic for parents, friends, families, and professionals who work with individuals with mental retardation and developmental disabilities.

After CBS had Jasinski apologize for the incident the spotlight is still on him. It turns out that he lied about his job; he is not now nor ever was he Public Relations Manager for The United Autism Foundation. He had not been employed by the foundation for a while by the time he joined Big Brother; when he was working there he was a salesperson, not a PR manager. (http://216.139.251.233/?p=509)

One advocacy group, A-CHAMP (Advocates for Children's Health Affected by Mercury Poisoning) has been pushing for advertisers to boycott Big Brother and CBS. A-CHAMP A-CHAMP is a national, non-partisan political action organization formed by parents in support of children with neurodevelopmental and communication disorders (http://www.a-champ.org/about_us.html).

Lowes has pulled their ads from the Big Brother show (but not from CBS altogether) to show their support for the call to boycott the show from consumers. (http://capwiz.com/a-champ/issues/alert/?alertid=11030836). "Lowe's is doing the right thing... voting with their dollars," said the executive director of Autism United, a group that has asked for Big Brother's cancelation, to the New York Daily News. Other companies being targeted by online petitions, letters, and phone calls are: Campbell's (which also makes Prego), McDonald's, Taco Bell, GEICO, and M&M/Mars. Viewers are targeting some of these companies due to parents purchasing the products these companies make for their children.