The box-office success of the new comedy film Tropic Thunder is especially good news in light of the protests lodged against it by professional busybodies annoyed by references to mental disabilities in the film. These so-called advocates for the disabled actually called for a national boycott of the film.

Representatives from several advocacy groups met with Dreamworks Studios executives before the film’s release, trying to convince them to take the word "retard" out of the dialogue or make a public apology. The studio politely refused to do either, which was precisely the right response.

The film’s strong appeal at the box office makes it obvious that audiences were equally unimpressed by the advocacy groups’ complaints.

Unlike the elitists who try to control what everyone can see and hear in the media, normal people are able to discern the difference between movies and reality. What’s more, they can tell that the use of a derogatory term in a fictional dialogue is not an endorsement of the term, nor an assertion that some people are inherently inferior, and is in no way an incitement to be unkind to others.

If only our elites, who think themselves so much smarter than the hoi polloi, were even half as wise as the people whose lives and culture they so arrogantly endeavor to control.