Don't call them 'midgets', they prefer the phrase 'little people'.

This is an excerpt from an article on sfgate.com:

One of the few groups entertainers can still insult freely is "midgets." I am a person with dwarfism and I get offended every time I hear someone in Hollywood use that word. After Mel Gibson, Michael Richards and Isaiah Washington, calling a person a "midget" is about the last thing anyone in Hollywood has left to apologize for saying.

Midget is a word that is misunderstood by most people. I hear it yelled at me out of car windows, both as an insult to my being short and sometimes as a threat to my safety. It is also frequently heard on television. I'd like to help set the record straight about this annoying, biting word that has followed me around my entire life.

The outcry over bigotry, homophobia and racism during the past six months in Hollywood has been admirable. But why should someone apologize for using the word midget? We must first look at where the word comes from. Midget was created from the combination of the word midge, meaning "small fly" and the suffix -et, so that etymologically the word midget means a "very small small fly."

In 1869, it was used specifically in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel "Oldtown Folks": "Now you know Parson Kendall's a little 'midget' of a man." Stowe is using midget as a way to describe Parson Kendall as an annoying, insignificant man. By 1884, it referred to small people who were exhibited in shows or circuses.

So what is the difference between a dwarf and a midget? In the circus shows of early America, dwarf had a more negative connotation than "midget." According to historian Robert Bogdan, dwarfs were further down the pecking order and were assigned more degrading roles. The terms midget and dwarf had important social meaning in the amusement world. Small people who were well-proportioned -- "perfect humans in miniature" -- in particular coveted the term midget for themselves as a way of disaffiliating from the more physically deformed dwarf exhibits. For midgets to be called a dwarf was an insult. Dwarfs were associated with exotic freak or circus clown roles, and these roles midgets shunned.

But calling someone a midget today is hardly a compliment, and the insults haven't stopped. In January, on an episode of the NBC show "30 Rock," Tina Fey's character says on her phone, "I just want to go home, watch the midget show and eat a block of cheese."

Unlike T.R. Knight, the "Grey's Anatomy" actor who says, "I've never been called that (a gay slur) to my face," I get called the word midget to my face quite often. The comments usually go something like, "Hey midget!"

I do not see an end to the use of midget. What I hope is that people's understanding evolves so that they realize the word is considered by many little people as a slur on their humanity. It shouldn't be a throwaway line in a comedy routine. It shouldn't be hurled out a car window. And it shouldn't be the only form of insensitivity toward other human beings that doesn't deserve an apology from the Hollywood stars, or ordinary people, who utter it either thoughtlessly or with malice. Article here.