Obama immediately called Shriver, who had been supportive of the president in the past, and apologized. Shriver also last month issued a statement that did not strongly admonish Obama but challenged the president to promote more athletes into his cabinet.

In contrast, his sister and First Lady of California Maria Shriver also last month issued a statement saying that such comments "hurts millions of people throughout the world."

“People were enormously hurt and offended,” the chairman of the Special Olympics told Redding News Review. “I think what it reveals is that in society at large, we still don’t understand the challenge that people with intellectual disabilities are bringing to us.

“I think many people would just rather forget about it, would rather not have to worry about it, and would rather just overlook it. But we look now to a new period, where we can have a meaningful conversation, not just name-calling or language.”

Shriver has sought to prohibit the language that is directed towards mentally disabled people by holding an event yesterday to stop the r-word, or use of the word “retard,” in order to prevent the labeling and generalization of his estimated three million athletes in 180 countries.

“We have our ‘Spread the Word to End the Word’ today, which is about helping people understand that the words that we use matter,” he said. “This is a civil rights movement; this is not just a nice, sweet program. This is a civil rights movement challenging the world to respect the full dignity with people who have disabilities.”