generally seems to reserve these moments for women. Witness this morning's "cheap slapper" comment. Unless Paul Henry paraphrased himself at another point in his programme, what he actually said was that Susan Boyle was"retarded", not that she was "a retard". There is a significant difference; the first usage derives from an attempt to express disability in terms of a flawed developmental model, the second is a stigmatisation. If people are dealing with which words are offensive, they should be precise, or else they fall into the same trap as those who banned the word "niggardly". I am not, however, prepared to cut Henry any slack over his remarks. He did follow up by claiming that one can tell that she's retarded just by looking at her, look at her closely, etc. This is direct stigmatisation. The larger question is why any of this is on television in the first place. Why are we expected to spend breakfast looking at presenters? Why not scientists or educators? Or a soap opera? Why should we be noting Clayton Weatherstone's remarks when he was only discussing someone in the terms that economists discuss the luckless victims of their policies every day, whose forced circumstances magically become their optimal and efficient economic choices? Sure, he's a monster. But economists are monstrous, and that never gets on television. You know, you can go about Paul Henry all day, but it wouldn't make any difference to him. He is an arrogant and nasty man who feels he