The R-word is back, and it’s definitely not funny | Part 2

We’re picking up where we left off last time on Hyperfocus for the conclusion of our two-part series on the R-word’s resurgence. 

Today, we meet a comedy writer who shares his personal evolution with the word and hear from a disability advocate. 

We’ll also learn more from our research correspondent, Dr. KJ Wynne, and have producer Cody Nelson back on to hear from host Rae Jacobson about what she’s learned. 

Related resources

• Andrea Moore Arts

• Craig Thomas’ upcoming novel 

• Dr. Chris Cipriano’s website

We love hearing from our listeners! Email us at hyperfocus@understood.org.

Episode transcript

Craig Thomas: To just turn it back on myself for a second so I don't sound preachy and holier than thou. I didn't scold anyone for making R-word jokes in 1997 or 2000.

Rae Jacobson: This is Craig Thomas. He co-created, with Carter Bays, a sitcom you might have heard of. It's called "How I Met Your Mother."

Craig Thomas: And to my great shame, I looked back not too long ago to a screenplay, an unproduced, it didn't go anywhere that Carter and I wrote that had that word in it. There was a joke where someone used that word.

This is something that 25-year-old Craig thought it would be OK to put in that screenplay, not understanding anything at the time or however old I was when I was working on that. Almost 50-year-old Craig looked at this, like recently, like a couple months ago. I was looking back through this old screenplay and I found that word and I sat with it.

It was like a punch in the face. It was proof that I had used that word in the past and that I had committed it to paper and thought it was OK, because in the late 1990s, it was a comedy word. It was an edgy comedy word. It's like a funny punchline to say.

And I, I, I hate to say it, it seems like it's, it's coming back. There, there are people, there are people in the culture now and in politics now dedicated to bringing this word back.

Rae Jacobson: This week on "Hyperfocus," the R-word, and how do you make people care? Part Two.

OK. Before we go any further, I want to say that if you haven't checked out our last episode, you really should, because this week we're picking up where we left off.

The R-word is undeniably, distressingly back.

In the last decade, thanks to the work of disability activists, the word had become taboo, a slur. And in many ways faded from the discourse. Today, we're continuing our look into the resurgence of the R-word. And this week, we're starting our story in the world of comedy.

Because over the years, we've all heard a lot of comics throw the R-word around as a way of being edgy. And on TV and film, disability gets used as a punchline. In doing our research, we came across Craig. He's famous for creating "How I Met Your Mother," writing on "American Dad," the "Late Night Show with David Letterman," and more. He's less famous for being a dad.

He has an elementary school-aged daughter, Celia, and a son, Elliot, who's in his late teens now. When Elliot was born, "How I Met Your Mother" was taking off as a massive hit sitcom. Craig was the showrunner and very busy as it was. And then Elliot came into the world with something called Jacobsen syndrome.

Craig Thomas: It's this really complicated, rare syndrome. Um, it's a deletion of part of one of the 11th chromosomes. And it has medical ramifications and, uh, you know, developmental, intellectual ramifications, all kinds of things. And yet I still had to be running this comedy TV show every week. And it was this really interesting balance. I was sort of living an hour drama show at home and then driving to work and doing a sitcom. It was just the weirdest thing. I was like a full slate of, uh, content, dramatic and comedic content.

Rae Jacobson: The moment Elliot was born, Craig's world shifted. The R-word, a word he'd never liked much, but that had also just seemed like part of the comedy fabric, had become personal and painful.

But Craig had something most of us don't: a platform. He was in comedy, writing one of the most popular shows on television, working in an industry where the R-word and language like it were just par for the course.

My picture of a TV writer's room isn't exactly a polite one. It's a place where, quite frankly, I assumed the R-word is, or used to be at least, used often. And according to Craig, that's not exactly incorrect.

Craig Thomas: My writing partner Carter and I, we got hired at age 22 on "David Letterman." So we were these kids in the mid-late 1990s. And 100% people threw around that word at that point, without thinking twice about it. Yeah. But to bring it back to myself, there was a time where I thought as a young man, apparently, I didn't even remember thinking this was true or using this word particularly much, but there it was, staring me in the face in the screenplay. And it was, I really almost burst into tears when I saw it.

My son is now 18. And I've spent 18 years really reprogramming my mind and soul to, to, and just seeing the world so differently.

So my son was born in 2007, which is still quite a while ago. And, and, you know, I don't, I think a lot has been learned about how to talk about disability since then and certainly since the late 1990s. Yeah. But I remember going into my writer's room after my son was born and thinking, I've got to tell people you cannot make jokes like this around me anymore. And I had to explain that.

The "How I Met Your Mother" writer's room was full of all big-hearted, wonderful people. I don't know that that word was ever tossed around in that way in that writer's room. It was a really wonderful writer's room. They're not all like that. Yeah. But just because I know comedy writers do play it fast and loose and throw around terms and like, I just didn't even want to risk that anyone would think it was OK to say that word around me starting from my son's birth. And I, I guess it's one of those you don't know 'til you know kind of things.

Rae Jacobson: Language is supposed to change. As we learn and understand and grow, the way we see the world shifts. Craig, the comedy writer, didn't know what Craig, Elliot's dad, did. And so he changed. And because he changed, he helped others change too.

Language evolves with our understanding of the world, or it should anyway.

We're constantly changing how we speak. It's part of being human. Sometimes we do it because it feels fun or cool. See the endless well of TikTok slang. Other times we do it because we've learned or understood something that pushes us to see things differently. All this is to say, changing what we say just isn't that radical of a thing.

As our research correspondent, Dr. KJ Wynne, said last episode, this happens all the time in medicine and psychology. For example, mental retardation as a diagnosis. It was such a stigmatized phrase that the language later was changed to IDD, which stands for intellectual and or developmental disabilities. And one near and dear to my heart, ADHD used to be listed in the DSM as minimal brain dysfunction.

But can changing how we speak affect the way we think? According to Dr. KJ, the research says yes. During our conversation, she brought up the concept of implicit bias, which she defines as the unconscious beliefs and thoughts we all have about other people.

Dr. KJ Wynne: Just because you believe that you're saying a word and no one is around to hear you say it, doesn't mean that, um, you still don't have that mental association. Humans like to think that we are smarter than we are. Um, that we can separate, um, and compartmentalize people with IDD from our friends and loved ones that we're trying to use the MR word with to insult. And that's just simply not true. I think once you start to make those mental associations of, um, IDD as an insult, you're hurting people because you, our brains are not smart enough to know the difference.

Rae Jacobson: So language, the language that we use, affects the way that we think about the world.

Dr. KJ Wynne: It does.

Rae Jacobson: And so when people throw this word around, I guess what I'm trying to, I hear you saying is we're not actually able because our brains are not as smart as we think they are, to separate out the true process that it creates in our own thinking. We're using this word and throwing it around and using it to mean stupid. And we're thinking, but we would never say it to someone who it would hurt. We would never do that. When in reality, just using the word is hurtful.

Dr. KJ Wynne: Yes, just using the word is hurtful and it's creating grooves in our brain. And I hate to say it that way because I don't think that we should base our morality on like if it's going to alter our brain chemistry or our brain circuits. It should just mean more because it's hurtful and because people exist who exist in all types of ways. And certainly intellect is not the way to say that someone is deserving of respect or perceived intellect to be exact.

Rae Jacobson: To be clear, I don't believe that most of the people using the R-word are intentionally trying to hurt people with disabilities. The word, to them, is just a joke.

But, and I'm pretty sure I'm not blowing anyone's mind here, just because something's just a joke, doesn't mean it's funny or fine or OK.

I don't think it's funny, and I don't think I'm alone. But for the sake of journalism, I figured I'd run this by someone who's funny professionally. So what does Craig Thomas, co-creator of "How I Met Your Mother," think of this type of humor?

Craig Thomas: It is punching down. Comedy at its best does not punch down. It's not what it's about. It, it, that is not why it exists. As a mode of expression, it's not bullying. Comedy is not bullying. Yeah. Um, comedy is thought-provoking, comedy is, um, satirical, comedy is, you, looking at the world and, uh, commenting on it through, in a way that maybe no one else could, uh, save through a comedic lens. But boy, is it not bullying? Boy, is it not being mean?

Being edgy comedy, and it, this was a thing like in the late '90s, early 2000s, and I think it's coming back. Um, edgy comedy is almost never funny in my opinion.

Rae Jacobson: When Craig and I talked, he was in the middle of making a "How I Met Your Mother" rewatch podcast, which you can totally check out. It's now been 20 years since the show premiered, and Craig was rewatching through new eyes.

He told me there were many things he still loves about it. And there were some things he'd take back because of exactly what we've been talking about. Language is different now. Understanding is different now.

Craig Thomas: Mostly the show is this very, it is the most emo sitcom of all time. It is all, it wears its heart on its sleeve. It plays like a soap opera. It plays like an hour drama. As a result, it is mostly not edgy comedy. But I will say this, we're only like 10, 12 episodes into the rewatch. I've already caught a few moments from 2005 where there's some joke where I go, I wouldn't do that joke today. You know what I mean? I wouldn't do exactly that joke. Maybe I wouldn't say that word.

There, there's just a couple of times where, like, the word "transvestite" is used to describe like, oh, there's a transvestite hooker out on the street. Like, painting a picture of a crazy scene at 3:00 in the morning in New York. It wasn't meant to be, um, insulting to that community, but it's singling out that word. It was using that word in a way to say like, how crazy is New York at 3:00 in the morning or whatever it is. And I don't, I look at it, it's like, that's sort of cheap and edgy. You're just saying that word because that word feels edgy.

I guess the point I'm trying to make is you, you don't know. You do have to evolve. You do have to learn as you go. Even this open-hearted show that is full of love, "How I Met Your Mother," we had a few moments as younger comedy writers, 30 years old when we launched the show, where we didn't realize some of those words, maybe you don't need to say those words as a part of a punchline of a joke. The point I'm trying to make here is the couple of moments like that I found so far rewatching the show, the jokes are not worth it. They're not funny. There was a better joke to say there.

Rae Jacobson: One of Craig's upcoming projects is a novel about a family like his. A husband's screenwriting career takes off as he and his wife try to adjust to their new reality as parents of a child with Down syndrome. It's Craig's way of using his talents to get people thinking and talking about disability in new ways, ones that are both positive and complicated.

Craig Thomas: How can you put things out there in the world that humanize this? How can you use whatever your little talents or skill sets are, whatever your ability to communicate is? Like, how do we do that? How do we make it human? How do we make it a felt experience for people? Because if it stays abstract, people can insult and diminish and swat away things in the abstract that when they are face to face with it and it feels real, even if it's a novel, even if it's fictional, but if it feels real and when these feel like real people, you can't dismiss it and disparage it so easily.

Rae Jacobson: You have to see the whole person.

Craig Thomas: You have to see the whole person. And I, you know, I want to ask you, Rae, like, what did it feel like to you getting that word thrown at you? What did that feel like? Did that feel like, did you know, you, I don't know when you got your diagnosis or when you like, to what extent you felt you were like hiding and then people would say something to you. It must have been like really shocking and horrible to have someone say something like that to you.

Rae Jacobson: It felt like getting caught.

Craig Thomas: Oh my God.

Rae Jacobson: And I think everybody at a young age does this when somebody says something that hurts you, right? You just kind of like, oh, you know, this kind of like shambling, brush it off, wiggle away from it. But for me, like I, because I knew that I wasn't, I've used this phrase a lot on this and I keep saying that because I keep using it, but like, I knew that I was like, not like the others. I was one of these things that was not like the others. I have ADHD, I have dyscalculia. As a kid, I also had dysgraphia. I couldn't write. My spatial awareness is not great.

Um, but I could always cover. And so when somebody would say like, what are you, you know, I would think like, oh my God, I didn't do it well enough. Yeah. You know, I would, I would freeze and feel like I had been seen in the, in a way that was not the way I wanted to be noticed.

I want to introduce one more person: Andrea Moore. Andrea is pretty amazing. She's an artist, a community organizer, and co-founder of the Wayfaring Band, a nonprofit that creates travel and learning opportunities for adults with IDD. She's also consulted for the Special Olympics, AmeriCorps, and the Army Corps of Engineers on accessibility and disability rights.

Andrea also introduced us to Michael, the movie lover who you met in part one. Andrea has been thinking and talking about disability for well over a decade, and she has her own take on where the conversation is today.

Andrea Moore: It's funny because like, I feel like now there's this big conversation around things are too politically correct. It's everyone is so PC. There are all these rules. But the irony is like, I remember 20 years ago people had that complaint. 20 years ago people were saying, you know, it's too PC. Everybody's like policing our language. And I think that actually that's the thing about language, is it's always evolving.

And we're learning, it's not that someone is newly hurt. It's that somebody that was maybe always hurt before, now we're in a place where we can hear that or we're asking and we want to hear it. And so we're getting new information and it changes the context.

Rae Jacobson: I think what Andrea is getting at here is that there's a gap between using the R-word as a joke or insult and cutting it from your vocabulary. Inside that gap is context. Context that leads to a deeper understanding.

Andrea Moore: Let's say a group of teenagers and their friends, they're like, "Well, when we use the R-word, the context is this. We mean that we're just messing around. It's casual. We're friends."

And I'm like, "Cool. Well, I'm going to expand your context by sharing there's some people that when they hear that word, when you use that word, this is what it feels like. This is what, this is what that word says." And now you have more context. And then you get to decide when you have more context if you want to keep using that word.

One of the things that like in my career as somebody who works in the community of people with disabilities, I've learned that it just isn't very effective to be a purist about language. In part because language evolves really, really quickly in some cases. Like a word that we were using 10 years ago is like out of fashion. It's like, OK, like we used to say, let's say for example, in the '90s and '80s, it was very common to talk about special needs.

Now the concept of special needs is falling out of fashion. Michael, you and I were talking at lunch about how people with disabilities, like our needs aren't that special, right?

Michael: Right.

Andrea Moore: That the needs that someone with a disability might have is actually the same needs that anyone else without a disability has.

Michael: Exactly.

Andrea Moore: For me, I can't be perfect at language because what works in one community might not work in another community either, right? Like we can't assume that we all want the same things. But when a human being tells me that they are hurt by something that I have said, for me, that has to matter to me.

Rae Jacobson: Changing your mind. I've been thinking about that phrase differently since we started working on this. On one level, we change our minds all the time. Last week, my daughter's favorite flavor of ice cream was chocolate. This week it's mint chip. But the deeper version, changing how we think, isn't usually done on a whim.

It takes work, digging deeper, asking questions, listening, absorbing, and eventually acting. So on one level, leaving the R-word behind seems like the most trivial of things. You just stop saying it. But that's naive. Because behind the R-word is so much. On one hand, it's just a word. On the other, it's an emblem of how we approach the world, how we see and treat others, how we want to live, and who we want to be.

But luckily, I don't have to think through all of this alone. In episode one, you heard from our producer, Cody Nelson. And I wanted to bring him back to talk through everything we've learned. Hi, Cody.

Cody Nelson: Hey, Rae. I am really excited to be here to unpack what you've learned over all these interviews that you've shared over the past hour or so of "Hyperfocus." And I want to break the fourth wall for a sec and say that I was around for all of these interviews. Um, I booked them with you and I sat through them. But that's all to say, I am still genuinely curious to be on mic with you now to unpack what your takeaways were from all of the reporting we've done.

And I want to go back to the question we asked at the beginning, which was on its face, a really simple one. How do you make people care enough about the R-word to stop using it? Do you feel like you landed on an answer?

Rae Jacobson: I feel like my answer to this is going to be unsatisfying, as all good answers kind of are. Yeah. I don't have a great takeaway for exactly how you would get someone to care about something that doesn't personally matter to them. Mhm.

I think a lot of what we heard is understanding is what creates change. The more you know, the more you get about the experience of someone else, the better able you are to put yourself in their shoes, to understand that your actions have consequences, that they feel like something to someone else. It's not just something you do in a vacuum. Your actions impact the world around you.

Cody Nelson: Yeah, it's not the most satisfying answer for a podcast necessarily that the answer is how do you get people to be more interested in the context of this harmful word that they're using and who it affects. And like you said, the word is not being used in a vacuum.

Rae Jacobson: Right. It comes with all this history behind it, all this feeling behind it, all this experience behind it. Like we heard from KJ, you have so much really serious history that goes along with the word. And to the point that it was changed, that the scientific community got together and said, "We're done with this. We're changing it. We're going to make a more inclusive, more thoughtful, more complete definition of what this is."

And when I think about the complete definition thing, I think about the thing I've become basically obsessed with, which is the deficit framing that Chris brought up to us. When she was talking about the fact that if you see people as whole people, you kind of can't dismiss them because people are people, right? We're complicated. We have a million different parts. There's no one person who can be reduced down to a simple word that defines them. It's just a part of who you are. And so when I think about what she was saying with whole person language versus dehumanizing language, I don't think anyone can hear that and not think, oh, there's a real difference between these two ways of approaching not just a word, but a person.

Cody Nelson: Yeah, absolutely. And going a bit deeper on this language piece, I thought it was really interesting. This came up with our chats with Dr. KJ and with Chris, just about the way that language infiltrates our mind. Mhm. And it infiltrates everybody's mind. It infiltrates the way that you and I think if we were to be using the word. And it also influences the way that people in power think. It's almost like this, this language feedback loop that creates the way we think about disability and the way we think about the tangible policies that affect people with these disabilities.

Rae Jacobson: You know, I don't know if you know this about me, Cody, but I have a degree in creative writing, which is like the most useful degree that you can get.

Cody Nelson: I actually didn't. I don't know how that hasn't come up yet.

Rae Jacobson: Well, I'm an English major to my core. Oh, congrats. Yes, I know. And it's been so fruitful for me. Uh, but one of the things that we learned — and bear with me, this is going to sound like I'm like on a tangent, and I understand why you might think I would go on one, but this I promise is sensible.

Cody Nelson: No, take us down that path.

Rae Jacobson: One of the things that you learn in that is literary theory. And this is just kind of like about how the way we talk about things, how we write about things, shapes the way we think about things. And it felt to me like what KJ was saying was that language shapes the way we think, not just the other way around. It's not what we see that shapes how we talk. It's kind of more of a give and take between the two, backed up by the things I learned in my super useful degree.

But one of the things that I learned during that time is about defamiliarization, which is an idea that all the language that we read is exciting to us because it's made strange. It's become unfamiliar. It's like you see a word and it becomes more exciting because it's out of context or it's changed. You have to think about it a little bit more deeply, and then you get more from what you're looking at.

And the R-word to me, the more you think about it, the more unfamiliar it becomes. The more it feels like something that's just this heavy weight that we're carrying around that is not really doing anything for anyone. It's not funny. It's not interesting. It's not something that has no impact. It has a huge impact. So the more we think about the way the language that we use, the better able we are to understand the consequences of that language.

Cody Nelson: And yeah, I think the way that that word has lost some of its meaning maybe explains why the podcasters and the comedians feel like they can throw it around in the way they do. I just fear that they're maybe not thinking about it as critically as they should be. But that is what we are here to do. And so I have one final question for you, Rae. And I want to preface this by saying that if you've made it this far into our podcast, you probably are someone who is open to changing your mind on the R-word or you know someone who is and you're looking for some cases to make to them. And so I want to ask you, Rae, what is your best case for cutting the R-word from your vocabulary?

Rae Jacobson: Oh, my best case. It hurts people. It hurts people in a real, tangible way. It's not just a joke. It's not just saying something for fun. It's not, it's not personal. It is real. It is heavy. It is like throwing a stone.

So, if that matters to you — and I believe that most people are the kind of people, and we've heard this again and again, most people don't throw this word around with the intent of being cruel. They might throw it around with the intent of being like funny and cheeky and mean, but they're not trying to be mean in the way that we would imagine this to be.

It's easy to talk about the Joe Rogans of the world who are like, "Yeah, we can be horrible again. That's so great." But I think the reality is that this is honestly just something that worked its way into a lot of vocabularies for a lot of different reasons. And when people use it, they don't think about it that much.

So, not to go back to my weird creative writing roots, but think about what you say. It's as simple as that piece. When you hear yourself talking, think, "Is this the kind of stuff I want to put out there? Is this feel good to me on every level? Is this easy or is this right?" This word genuinely, actually hurts.

It affects our policies. It affects the way that we treat and think about other people. I cannot stop thinking about Rosa's brother. "How you talk about my sister is how you will treat her." And what he understood is what we've learned again and again in these episodes. This word has consequences.

So if you are around someone who is just throwing it around casually, you can say, "Let me tell you a little bit about this word, about the history of this word. Let me tell you why I want you to stop using it. I'm not trying to shame you. I'm not trying to tell you you're a bad person. Sit down with me for five minutes. Let me tell you what I know." And I believe, genuinely, that if that is done in an open, honest, listening, changing way, that is the best thing that you can do to combat the use of the R-word. It's like Andrea said, "When a human being tells me they're hurt by something, that has to matter."

So what we're saying, what you would say in a conversation is, "This should matter. It matters. This isn't worth it."

"Hyperfocus" is made by me, Rae Jacobson, and Cody Nelson. Our music comes from Blue Dot Sessions. Samiah Adams is our supervising producer. Our research correspondent is Dr. KJ Wynne. Video is produced by Calvin Knie and edited by Alyssa Shea. Briana Berry is our production director and Neil Drummond is our editorial director.

I want to say a very special thank you to all of our guests this week who went above and beyond for us: Chris, Michael, Andrea, Craig, our very own Dr. KJ, and of course, Cody Nelson.

To learn more about all of the amazing projects they're working on — Craig's novel, Andrea's art — please check out the show notes this week. It's going to be full of really great stuff.

If you have any questions for us or ideas for future episodes, write me an email or send a voice memo to hyperfocus@understood.org.

This show is brought to you by Understood.org. Our executive directors are Laura Key, Scott Cocchiere, and Jordan Davidson. Understood is a nonprofit organization dedicated to empowering people with learning and thinking differences like ADHD and dyslexia. If you want to help us continue this work, you can donate at understood.org/give.