The Middle-Aged Genius’s Guide to Almost Everything 43 – Retarded:Developmentally Disabled::Shell Shocked:Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder
February 29, 2020
[Beginning of recorded material]
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What was your experience working with developmentally disabled people?
Rick Rosner: We had a group home. It was close to campus near where all the fraternities and sororities were. Everyone in Boulder knew this house was where the retarded people lived. You’d see them out. Boulder is a small town. You’d see them out in public places taking group trips. The people who were wiseacres would go up to them and talk to them in a retarded voice. Then they would talk back in their retarded voices. It as thought of as hilarious. It was a different time.
Jacobsen: What do you mean, “It was a different time”?
Rosner: Now, you cannot say, “Retarded”; unless, you are talking about someone who is retarded. And you cannot even say it then. You have to say the more current term like “developmentally disabled” or something.
Jacobsen: Why have these terms changed over time like shell shocked and PTSD?
Rosner: Shell shock is more descriptive of what the deal is. “Shell shock,” I think, embodies a whole theory – not even necessarily a psychological theory – about the brain being shaken from the explosions. In that, you were scared from all the brain damage. Your brain being shaken up. Shell shock went away because they developed a more reasonable theory of PTSD. These other terms go away because they are mean to people. If you call somebody retarded in a disparaging way, then you are saying that people who are retarded are less than other people. So, it’s bad.
Jacobsen: What does this say about our current culture?
Rosner: People are more aware. We make progress. People complain, “It was a better time when we didn’t have to watch what we said.” It wasn’t a better time. It was a shitty time. So, talk to those people, or pull them aside and talk to them, you can work with reasonable current limitations. That reasonable political correctness you can work with; unreasonable political correctness can be told to “fuck off.”
Jacobsen: What is the line between reasonable and unreasonable there?
Rosner: Just how far you want to take things, I have been criticized on Twitter for saying things someone thought was insensitive. Sometimes, I will take down the tweets, if I agree with them – even if I don’t agree with them. I can see if someone was too sensitive too. If the point is bullshit, then I ignore it. It doesn’t happen often either way. You can take stuff too far. College, I decided to volunteer and take people from the group home for the developmentally disabled roller skating once a week. I got fired after 8 or 9 months because I always showed up late. I was a really irresponsible guy.
[End of recorded material]
Authors[1]
American Television Writer
(Updated July 25, 2019)
*High range testing (HRT) should be taken with honest skepticism grounded in the limited empirical development of the field at present, even in spite of honest and sincere efforts. If a higher general intelligence score, then the greater the variability in, and margin of error in, the general intelligence scores because of the greater rarity in the population.*
According to some semi-reputable sources gathered in a listing here, Rick G. Rosner may have among America’s, North America’s, and the world’s highest measured IQs at or above 190 (S.D. 15)/196 (S.D. 16) based on several high range test performances created by Christopher Harding, Jason Betts, Paul Cooijmans, and Ronald Hoeflin. He earned 12 years of college credit in less than a year and graduated with the equivalent of 8 majors. He has received 8 Writers Guild Awards and Emmy nominations, and was titled 2013 North American Genius of the Year by The World Genius Directory with the main “Genius” listing here.
He has written for Remote Control, Crank Yankers, The Man Show, The Emmys, The Grammys, and Jimmy Kimmel Live!. He worked as a bouncer, a nude art model, a roller-skating waiter, and a stripper. In a television commercial, Domino’s Pizza named him the “World’s Smartest Man.” The commercial was taken off the air after Subway sandwiches issued a cease-and-desist. He was named “Best Bouncer” in the Denver Area, Colorado, by Westwood Magazine.
Rosner spent much of the late Disco Era as an undercover high school student. In addition, he spent 25 years as a bar bouncer and American fake ID-catcher, and 25+ years as a stripper, and nearly 30 years as a writer for more than 2,500 hours of network television. Errol Morris featured Rosner in the interview series entitled First Person, where some of this history was covered by Morris. He came in second, or lost, on Jeopardy!, sued Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? over a flawed question and lost the lawsuit. He won one game and lost one game on Are You Smarter Than a Drunk Person? (He was drunk). Finally, he spent 37+ years working on a time-invariant variation of the Big Bang Theory.
Currently, Rosner sits tweeting in a bathrobe (winter) or a towel (summer). He lives in Los Angeles, California with his wife, dog, and goldfish. He and his wife have a daughter. You can send him money or questions at LanceVersusRick@Gmail.Com, or a direct message via Twitter, or find him on LinkedIn, or see him on YouTube.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Founder, In-Sight Publishing
Footnotes
[1] Four format points for the session article:
- Bold text following “Scott Douglas Jacobsen:” or “Jacobsen:” is Scott Douglas Jacobsen & non-bold text following “Rick Rosner:” or “Rosner:” is Rick Rosner.
- Session article conducted, transcribed, edited, formatted, and published by Scott.
- Footnotes & in-text citations in the interview & references after the interview.
- This session article has been edited for clarity and readability.
For further information on the formatting guidelines incorporated into this document, please see the following documents:
- American Psychological Association. (2010). Citation Guide: APA. Retrieved from http://www.lib.sfu.ca/system/files/28281/APA6CitationGuideSFUv3.pdf.
- Humble, A. (n.d.). Guide to Transcribing. Retrieved from http://www.msvu.ca/site/media/msvu/Transcription%20Guide.pdf.
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Rick Rosner 