Want to hear people's thoughts about this

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Well, OCD is a a bit different from some of the examples he uses. One can have the O or the C, or even the O and the C, and have it applied in a clinical sense without being labeled with actual OCD. I think this makes it a bit hard to understand for many people. Even professionals may disagree whether somebody merely has obsessive thoughts with compulsive behaviors or full blown OCD. Cerebral palsy, on the other hand, is not so confusing. Generally, one has it or does not.

Still, if I knew the person next to me suffered from actual OCD, I would make an effort to avoid making light of the disorder or using it in a slangy way to describe a fastidious person.

What the quoted comedian is disingenuosuly skipping over is that the terms dumb, lame, imbecile etc. have long been retired from clinical use and don't appear in the medical records of currently living people. He acknowledges this at the beginning but then pretends it has no significance. However, his friend really does have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder on his medical record and so emotionally reacts when somebody uses it so jokingly.

The comedian goes through a long list of words that used to be diagnoses and are now insults, having been intentionally retired by the medical community after they became insults. He then ends his bit using ret*d jokingly, to prove his point that it should be perfectly ok to use diagnoses as insults and jokes. But what completely escapes him (or doesn't, since I think he's being disingenuous) is that what OCD and ret*d have in common is that they are on the medical records of living people. This is why the intellectual disabilities community is on a campaign against ret*d as an insult but have mounted no such campaign against idiot, imbecile or moron. Although those words were in medical use many years ago, it takes a bit of research to be able to link them to actual IQ numbers- research this guy did.

In the future, ret*d will no longer appear on the medical records of any living person, having been replaced with intellectually disabled, learning disabled, cognitively disabled depending on country (and I know I missed some). The medical community does scramble to make up new terms in order to stay ahead of the insults. The always fail to stay fully ahead because the new terms become adopted as insults quite quickly.

Would it be ok if autistic became the hot new slang word for whatever people hated most? If that would not be ok, then it should be understandable why other terms that apply to living people are not ok. It's not ok to turn somebody's diagnosis into mockery.

He doesn't skip over it, reread the longest paragraph towards the end:

"But I realize language evolves. And as medical terms are co-opted as slang, doctors come up with new terms and the world goes on. It's happened before, it will happen again, and the only reason people notice OCD is because it's ongoing. Logically, there's no reason to single out this particular term, while considering the others acceptable"

I also think we need to keep in mind that the comedian isn't really addressing his arguments to people who use these terms casually, he is addressing people (specifically his 'friend') who get overly upset over it. I think whenever you hear someone use the term casually you have to consider the context, and consider why they are using the term, is it:

a) based on a genuine misunderstanding of the disorder - e.g. do they actually think that preferring an organised fridge qualifies them for a diagnosis of OCD? If so then it would be fine to correct and educate them politely.

b) is it an intentional attempt to insult or denigrate people with the disorder - obviously this is not ok.

or c) merely an exaggeration and part of a light-hearted, informal conversation - e.g. "I had a bit of an OCD moment tidying my fridge this morning, every food group has it's own shelf and..." If this is the case I think we should all calm down and let it go.

+1

I see C as ok, and the key word in there is "moment". Someone is experiencing a moment, a small fraction of the life of someone w/ OCD. I see no problem w/ applying the same thing to ASD. I have used the words "aspie moment" when referring to something aspie-like that my bf has done multiple times. It's when C becomes a mask for A and B that it becomes a problem. It's a slippery slope.

I think that term "aspie moment" or an equivalent could easily become a euphemism for a social blunder or anti-social behavior or obsessiveness. "Senior moment" is used as a euphemism for forgetfulness, it's the same concept.

Those "moments" are a good thing. It gives people a tiny insight into how the affected person lives and provides context for empathy.

I honestly wouldn't care if it did. Just like the other terms used this way, it's a condition no one would covet, which makes it a natural word of choice.
In fact, I've kind of used it that way already. When seeing something I find lame on TV, I have said "they must be lower on the spectrum than I am!", and I sure don't mean it to be a compliment. It was meant to imply the same as is meant when ret*d, lame, idiotic etc is used.

I've also used it in its direct meaning: Earlier this year I even got frustrated with a blood relative and said: "sometimes I wonder if you're on the spectrum as well". (It was regarding social interactions; I tried to ask them about something I had read here on WP and they sounded almost as out of it as me, which was frustrating as I was asking for advice and guidance)

It would just be contemporary slang, like any other. I am completely unable to get offended/hurt/upset by it, and I don't understand how anyone can.
In the same way, there are jokes about both aspies and autists on Sickipedia. I have read them all and IMO some of them were funny, none of them offended me.