Why is everyone determined to be outraged all the time?

There’s been a rather wonderful debate bubbling along at the Guardian, about the French minister Pierre Lellouche’s use of the word ‘autistic’ to describe the English Tories. Well, in fact that’s not quite what the debate has been about; everyone is agreed that Lellouche is beyond the pale. The debate has been about whether or not the Guardian was right to report what was said by the chap in a headline. Quite a lot of readers thought that it wasn’t. Elsa and John Wingad, for example, wrote: ‘We know that the use of “autistic” in your headline was a quote, however by choosing to repeat it in such prominence [sic] reinforces negative attitudes towards autism.’ Do you know Elsa and John Wingad? I think that if you have any space in your Christmas diary, you should invite them over for a knees-up: I imagine they are quite the most marvellous fun. Another reader, unnamed, complained because her own son was autistic and he wouldn’t have liked to have read the term used in a pejorative manner.

I suppose you might argue that this doesn’t matter because it’s the Guardian and a fairly large proportion of its readers are mentally unhinged, especially John and Elsa. Maybe autism is pushing it a bit, but you might argue that some of them behave as if they have a touch of the old Asperger’s. Or worse than this, work in the mental health industry lecturing people about why they shouldn’t use the word ‘mad’ or ‘doolally’ or ‘psychotic’ or ‘crazier than a shit-house rat’ because it — what was that phrase — reinforces negative attitudes towards mental illness. (Incidentally, isn’t it right that we should have a fairly negative attitude toward the neurological condition of autism? I mean, it’s not a good thing, in itself, is it? We would rather it did not exist.