Tropic Thuder To Be Boycotted...By Idiots

Here's an advance clip from Tropic Thunder.
So maybe you've heard already because it's been all over the internet this week but there is going to be an organised boycott of Tropic Thunder because of its use of the word 'Retard'. Slate recently discovered an 11-page action kit from the coalition of disability groups that are protesting Tropic Thunder which offers step-by-step instructions on how to effectively organise the boycott around the country (America)

This all seems ridiculous and yes, retarded. Shit! We're gonna get boycotted now. In the movie Ben Stiller, parodies a vain actor playing Hollywood's impression of somebody with a learning disability and whilst mining it for laughs appears to satirise Hollywood rather than disabled people. Watch the clip above to see Robert Downey Junior giving Stiller acting advice on why you never go full retard in a role i.e. because Hollywood won't accept it. You have to be strangely gifted along with your disability to win awards and to be acceptable. So again, it's not the disabled but Hollywood that's getting the flak.

The coalition claims Robert Downey Junior's monologue (above) amounts to a hate speech and that the word retard is equivalent to the word nigger. Even if it is (debatable by the way) they are completely missing the point. Robert Downey Junior is playing a vein actor who is conceited enough to treat a disability as an opportunity for garnering awards. In other words this is the equivalent of boycotting a movie because there is a patently racist character in it who uses the word nigger. That is a character who may exist in the real world. You can't censor the depiction of such a character in a movie.

But as usual, this boycott is being organised by people who haven't even seen the movie and so have no right to comment whatsoever...Oh wait. I just remembered we haven't seen it either...Yeah. Whatever. I was leaving anyway.