White House Chief of Staff says he will join effort to stop use of 'retarded'

The controversy over Emanuel's remark continued to dog the sometimes foul-mouthed senior Obama adviser despite his having privately apologized to Special Olympics Chief Executive Tim Shriver shortly after the comment was made public last week.

In a statement after an afternoon meeting at the White House, Shriver and five other disability rights advocates said Emanuel had "sincerely apologized" for the earlier comment during a strategy meeting, which was reported in the Wall Street Journal.

"We are happy that he will join more than 54,000 other Americans in pledging to end the use of the R-word at www.r-word.org, and that he committed that the administration would continue to look for ways to partner with us, including examining pending legislation in Congress to remove the R-word from federal law," they said in the statement.

An Emanuel aide declined to comment after the meeting.

The Wall Street Journal reported last week that Emanuel used the phrase "[expletive] retarded" during a meeting with liberal activists in August. In a letter to Emanuel on the day the article appeared, Shriver took the chief of staff to task for using a word that is considered insulting.

"I know that private political discourse can sometimes include profanity. But at the same time, our community cannot accept the idea that they will remain the butt of jokes and taunts," Shriver wrote. "I hope you will join us in changing the conversation and eliminating this word from your vocabulary."