Drew Karedes, KHOU - February 7, 2014
Because the worst problem in society today is PEOPLE PRETENDING TO BE DISABLED SO THEY CAN TAKE THEIR DOGS INTO COFFEE SHOPS.
Sunday, February 9, 2014
Two Down, One To Go?
Dustin Rowles, Pajiba.com - February 6, 2014
This article is how I found out The Michael J. Fox Show has been cancelled.
The Michael J. Fox Show was one of three new TV shows featuring disabled characters that I was looking forward to this TV season. The others were Ironside (remake of the late ’60s, early ‘70s Ironside starring Raymond Burr), and Growing Up Fischer, which premieres February 23 and is being hyped by NBC during Winter Olympics ad breaks. "Ironside" was cancelled after only 3 episodes. Fox’s show lasted awhile longer, and received somewhat better reviews, but it never came even close to catching fire.
It seems like "The Michael J. Fox Show" made it’s best, maybe it’s only points about disability in the Pilot episode. After that, it really did become just another generic sit-com with somewhat higher quality than usual stars … particularly Michael J. Fox, who portrayed a news anchor with Parkinson’s Disease, the same condition he actually has, and Betsy Brandt, who was so brilliantly dramatic and funny in "Breaking Bad”. But, neither star power nor the potentially powerful themes generated by the main character’s disability could save the show from mediocrity … maybe because they failed to use disability after the first episode, other than a few shallow cracks. The writers and possibly Fox may have thought that focusing strongly and frequently on Parkinson's would send the wrong message about it. Touching on it occasionally and lightly, then maybe once or twice per season depicting a real disability-related dilemma probably would have worked well on the show, except that none of the other stories or character traits were interesting or particularly funny.
“Ironside", too, failed because except for the main character using a wheelchair the show was generic. "Ironside" was bolder in using the main character’s paralysis as an important plot and character point. But again, the unusual inclusion of disability didn’t alter the fact that “Ironside” was just another police procedural, with nothing much to say that most viewers haven't heard before.
Pajiba’s Dustin Rowles says of “The Michael J. Fox Show”, along with some other cancelled NBC sit-coms:
"But the other thing they had in common was tired writing. They took decades-old sitcom tropes and simply modified them to fit these updated characters. They built shows around a premise, instead of around the characters. They didn’t bother challenging the audience, they simply tried to please as many people as possible.”
In the case of “The Michael J. Fox Show” and “Ironside”, disability was “the premise” that wasn’t enough by itself. Not that it was a bad premise for either show. I don’t think people were put off by characters with disabilities. But, disability alone is probably not enough to sustain a TV show in the absence of interesting characters, good writing, and up-to-date or innovative filming styles.
I’m hopeful for “Growing Up Fischer”. J. K. Simmons, who plays the blind father of a “typical” family, is one of the very best “that guy” character actors, and Jenna Elfman, who plays his wife, is accomplished, though to my mind a bit harder to like. The real problem that worries me is that I haven’t seen any indicate yet that there’s going to be anything interesting or funny about this show except that “Dad is blind” and makes lots of jokes about that aspect of himself. If that’s all they’ve got in mind, I’m not sure it will work, and it just might be noxious.
One thing does occur to me now that I’ve never really considered before. Maybe the reason disability is so rare on television is that doing it well is really, really hard.
Meanwhile, if you want to see complex, challenging, empowering disabled characters on TV, watch Game Of Thrones, a show that is not at all about disability, but has, at current count, four characters with disabilities. The Fourth Season begins April 17.
Weekly Wrap-Up
Sunday, February 2, 2014
Monday, February 3, 2014
Tuesday, February 4, 2014
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Friday, February 7, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Saturday, February 8, 2014
Book Club: "The Man He Became", Part Two: "He's Through"
James Tobin - Simon & Schuster, 2013
Part Two: "He's Through"
For this second book club installment, looking at Part Two of “The Man He Became”, I’ll highlight the themes of Part Two, roughly in order, along with some of examples and ideas that stood out for me.
1. Tobin looks at the social status and stigmas of disability in the early 20th century.
Some of the prejudices were familiar, but some were new to me. For example, I had never heard of the association at that time between syphillus and paralysis. I found it fascinating that Polio was linked ... incorrectly ... with “dirty” immigrant children and their neighborhoods. Tobin traces the evolution of peoples’ ideas about disability from cruel and superstitious beliefs to more compassionate and scientific ideas … while noting that in the 1920s, there’s nothing yet like a positive view of disability or a “disability rights” perspective.
2. Roosevelt and his circle refine the scope of what “recovery” means.
At first, it means total recovery. Then, walking without crutches or with only a cane. Then being able to navigate essential functions and rituals normally enough to be viable in politics. They really do seem to have adjusted and readjusted their take on Roosevelt’s disability as his condition and long-term prognosis changed.
3. Competing visions of how Roosevelt should spend the rest of his life.
Should he gve up entirely and be bedridden? Will he retire to Hyde park and spend a pleasant life of favorite diversions and light duties managing his estate? He could live an interesting and useful life dabbling in local politics and writing. Or, could he return to big-time politics and his Presidential ambitions? Eleanor didn’t believe early on that he’d ever reach high office again, but felt it was best for him to stay in politics. That sounds like a surrender, but this led to the groundwork being laid for a later rise to the Presidency.
4. Advanced therapy theories and techniques include both the traditional "medical model” and the idea of adaptation for the most fully functional everyday living, whether or not the dream of a “complete recovery” is realized.
I’m impressed that the doctors and therapists aren’t fanatical about Roosevelt walking again, or encouraging total devotion to therapy. Dr. Draper’s unorthodox views probably helped. Roosvelt’s medical team crafted a mixed goal of physical improvement and practical adaptation.
5. Not hiding the truth, but controlling the narrative, both personally and politically.
Tobin continues to paint a picture of improvisation, in which there was never a grand plan to hide the disability, but efforts at various stages to give people the most favorable impression, and to recast what disability meant to people, at least in Roosevelt’s case.
6. Tobin looks at how wheelchairs and crutches were viewed in 1920s society, and the perceived overlapping of illness, weakness, and disability.
Wheelchairs and crutches were symbolic of illness and dependence. Most wheelchairs weren’t designed well for many environments. Early on at least, Roosevelt only used a wheelchair for point to point mobility, not so much because of stigma, but because of poor design. Disability and illness overlapped in peoples’ minds, but not completely. There was a narrow margin of disability that people could interpret as something other than illness. This is the conception of active, productive disability that key people on Roosevelt’s medical team understood and quietly encouraged.
7. Roosevelt reintroduced to politics suit other people’s purposes, but with unexpected results.
Roosevelt was asked to nominate Al Smith, and later to run for governor (he refused the first time) in order to help Al Smith in his quest for the Presidency. The Smith people saw him as an ally from a different camp, and as someone who had political juice, but no power … a potent symbolic figure, but not a threat. So, they inadvertently raised up someone who ended up achieving what Smith couldn't.
8. Roosevelt’s Democratic Convention speech to nominate Smith starts to transform how people process Roosevelt’s disability.
This might be the pivotal moment of the book. Within the span of a single speech, observers went from pity and sadness to admiration and thinking the unthinkable. Tobin recounts beautiful descriptions by Frances Perkins (who would later be Secretary of Labor under Roosevelt). I loved the moment when Roosevelt asked a Pennsylvania delegate standing hear him to “check the podium” to confirm that it was nailed down. The event was somewhat romanticized as time went by, but it does seem true that as the onvention broke down and deadlocked, some people seriously saw Roosevelt as a viable alternative candidate. Afterwards, people certainly said that he’d be a contender in 1928, “if you can get right”.
9. Persistence of the idea that he will have to walk again in order to succeed.
Roosevelt landed on the idea that he could still be President, but he would first have to be able to walk without crutches. This became his criteria, and so far it seems like he thought it was possible, which enabled him to keep on both with his physical therapy and his political activities. At this stage, pursuing both goals in parallel seem in retrospect to have been genius, but of course, at the time it was just another hopeful improvisation. Nobody knew if it would work.
10. Tobin describes the roots of Roosevelt’s dual approach to his disability … private attention to it, public reticence and diversion.
It was a time when “reticence” and privacy were more prevalent for everyone. Tobin provides more insight into the stigma of disability, which was in part a side effect of a general taboo against anything to do with the naked, unprotected, or damaged body, Tobin suggests that part of the excitement at the convention was that by speaking and showing himself publicly, Roosevelt was breaking taboo. At first people felt some revulsion, but then a weakening or breaking of the taboo itself. Roosevelt was a particularly private, “opaque” man, even for that time. I was struck by Roosevelt’s frequent use of the made-up word, “Infradig” … meaning things not to be talked about. Anything to do with his disability was “Infradig” in normal conversation. There were two exceptions ... he would discuss his condition with medical professionals and with other people who had Polio. Tobin here starts to mention letters Roosevelt exchanged with other people who had Polio … people from all walks of life, who had nothing in common with him except Polio. I was enormously moved to read that this exceptionally private man was so open with details of his life with people he barely knew, because he sought their advice and, eventually, began to offer his advice to them.
11. Roosevelt learns from trial and error, and starts to take control of his recovery.
Roosevelt is at first totally committed to therapy. Eventually, he becomes distracted and a bit diluted by other pursuits. He accidentally discovers that heat and sun help, as well as swimming. He never rejects medical advice, but becomes less dependent on it. Roosevelt starts to seek medical advice he agrees with. Also, he starts to contributes his own study and observation of Polio and its treatment. Without getting too far ahead of things, it sounds to me similar to how he approached the Presidency … listening to the best advice, but also following his own instincts, and above all TRYING STUFF.
12. At the end of Part Two, Roosevelt starts his association with Warm Springs.
Favorite quotes from Part Two:
“Hell, it’s not legs we want in the White House, it’s brains!”
“Wheelchairs were not for people who were leading normal lives. They were for sick people, in hospitals and sanitariums. With an attendant always standing behind him, the man in a wheelchair was by definition not an independent human being who could care for himself.”
"To stand was an act of manhood," Tobin quotes extensively from Emily Post about all the occasions when etiquette demands that a man stand. "Roosevelt could do none of these things."
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Next Saturday, February 16, we'll finish "The Man He Became" with Part Three: "Resurrection"
USA Today on the Minimum Wage / 14(c) Issue
Aamer Madhani, USA Today - February 8, 2014
Another good summary article updating and explaining the Minimum Wage / 14(c) issue. It’s encouraging that Labor Secretary Perez actually went on the record stating that allowing some companies to pay some disabled people sub-Minimum Wage has been “detrimental” to people with disabilities. That may be obvious to us, but right or wrong, the practice was, in fact, supposed to be beneficial for disabled people. If the U.S. Secretary of Labor believes the practice is harmful, that’s an important step towards ending it.
All the more reason to email the White House and Department of Labor. Click the link to do that now!
God Love A Curb Ramp
John Cole, Balloon Juice - February 7, 2014
This is a nice and unexpected appreciation of the Americans with Disabilities Act, from a non-disabled blogger who recently hurt his knee, and discovered the uses of curb ramps.
I’m a regular Balloon Juice reader, and it is a very liberal / progressive blog, so I’m not all that surprised that Cole would be in favor of the ADA, in the abstract. But isn’t our main political difficulty getting people to focus on our issues, even before we get to whether they support our preferred policies? Sadly, there are plenty of progressives who happen to also be clueless about disability issues. Reading between the lines, I get the sense that Cole still doesn’t know much. For one thing, he seems to think the ADA has fixed everything for people with disabilities. But, I appreciate that he took his short-term experience and drew the right political and policy conclusions from it. That’s pretty good.
Note also that he also correctly identifies the typical enemies of accessibility and nondiscrimination laws ... cocktail party libertarians and stingy business people.
Friday, February 7, 2014
Minimum Wage / 14(c) Exemption Issue: Take Action Now!
Send this letter, or one like it, to President Obama and the U.S. Department of Labor:
"I join the Autistic Self Advocacy Network in thanking President Obama and Department of Secretary of Labor Perez for working to increase economic opportunity for all Americans. It is with this in mind that I also urge you to make certain that people with disabilities are not excluded from those efforts.
Workers with disabilities, including those now making less than minimum wage under Section 14(c) of the Fair Labor Standards Act, must be included in the President's forthcoming executive order on a $10.10/hour minimum wage for government contractors.
"All government contractors" should mean all government contractors, including those with disabilities."
You can email this letter, and add your own thoughts and experiences if you wish, by clicking the link below. The automatic advocacy email setup is by the Center for Disability Rights in Rochester, New York, but it is intended for anyone who wants their opinion counted on this issue.
Advocates working on this say that it’s important to get letters and emails to the White House and Dept. of Labor by Monday.
"Fear is a powerful factor for many sheltered workshop proponents, but the vision of a better economic future and a life of one's own for those with disabilities is stronger."
Winter Paralympics
I am an absolute sucker for the Olympics … both Summer and Winter varieties. I say “sucker” because I actually sort of object to the Olympics and the Olympics mythos in every way you can imagine. It’s a terrible waste of money, often for countries and cities that can ill afford it. They almost never “pay off” the way they promise. There are too many subjective, arty sports for my taste. They foster jingoism as much as international peace. Olympic broadcasting is syrupy and awkward. There’s always one complete and utter a-hole athlete that the TV networks insist is will be the star of the games.
Yet, I can’t not watch them. Mind you, I don’t spend much time actually glued to the games. Most of the time I’m doing something else when they’re on. But they are on in my place pretty much all the time during the games.
Of course, I’m especially interested in the Winter Paralympics, held about a month after the Olympics, also in Soch, Russiai this year, March 7-16. Even though the Winter Paralympics are still a month away, I thought I’d look up a few good websites to visit and use as references once they start:
NBC says it will broadcast a total of 50 hours of Paralympics events across it’s various networks. Note that most likely, the bulk of those hours will be on its “lesser” networks like NBC Sports Network, CNBC, and the like. Right now the schedule page only shows the currently-running Olympic Games, but I’m hoping that when we get to March, the same chart will show the Paralympic broadcasts.
Horror Story ... Good News Story
CBS New York / Associated Press - February 6, 2014
First a bit of context, then a few thoughts on this story.
The news segment mentions the New York State Justice Center for Protection of People with Special Needs. It is a relatively new program set up because of several years of shocking stories of abuse and neglect in New York State’s Developmental Disability service system, mostly cases of workers in group homes physically and / or mentally abusing people with developmental disabilities, including physical and cognitive impairments. What emerged from these stories was an apparent situation where problems were kept “in house”, and care workers were given the same kinds of appeal and job protection rights as, say, a unionized autoworker. In other words, “dealing with” abuse or neglect accusations too often meant reassigning someone to a different position, or a different group home, or putting them on paid leave until a review maybe did or maybe didn’t get to the truth of what happened.
I explain this because this case is a good sign that the new Justice Center is working. Someone apparently saw a cellphone video taken by one of the workers, and this person … presumably totally unconnected with and unfamiliar with the DD system ... was able to report the incident to the Justice Center, leading to real, consequential action. As terrible as the practices themselves were, this should in one sense be seen as a “good news” story.
As for thoughts on the story …
Not for the first time, I struggle to resolve whether this is mainly a story of individual evil and depravity, or about the kinds of incidents that crop up again and again in institutional care settings like group homes and nursing homes. I think it’s both, but news stories tend to focus almost exclusively on the individual evil, without questioning the system that allows it to happen or even maybe encourages it. The incidents I describe above that led to the Justice Center being set up were rare examples of a mainstream newspaper … The New York Times … actually connecting the dots and pointing out systemic failures.
The father of a developmentally disabled person who condemned the individuals but essentially defended the institution kind of broke my heart. If you make the decision to go for institutional care for a loved one, it’s got to be awfully hard to acknowledge that maybe the system itself is fundamentally flawed. Seeing individuals within the system do horrible things is terrible, but if you can maintain you faith in the system, then you can convince yourself that everything is going to be okay.
I’m not at all suggesting that this kind of abuse happens in every group home. I’m not suggesting that most group home workers are horrible, amoral, or cruel. What I am suggesting is that there are aspects of any hierarchal, bureaucratic institutional care models ... in which caregivers essentially have power over the people they care for, and the people with disabilities are “under” their care ... that help peoples’ worst instincts to flourish. I think it’s inherent in the institutional model itself. Abuse can happen with home care provided in your own house or apartment, but the power structure there is much, much simpler and easy to cut through if necessary.
On a surface level, it makes me ill to see that the group home in question is named, the “Independent Group Home Living” program. What a misuse of “Independent Living”.
Thursday, February 6, 2014
Minimum Wage ... Updates and Further Thoughts
Sam Hananel, ABC / Associated Press - February 4, 2014
Here is a more up to date report on the minimum wage increase / sub-minimum wage issue. There’s not much new to report, except that it looks like more disability groups are getting into gear and pushing the White House to act. I’d say right about now would be a good time for President Obama to announce that the federal contract worker Minimum Wage hike will benefit all qualified workers, and that nobody will be paid less than Minimum Wage again.
And, here's a terrific blog post that's more of an editorial, but also provides a good overview of this issue.
I would just add a couple of points.
First, at the moment this argument is only about 14(c) exemption workers who are also working for federal contractors. President Obama's Minimum Wage increase would only apply to federal contractors, and not all 14(c) workers are federal contractors. So even if we win this fight, it won't necessarily do away with 14(c) entirely, and many disabled workers would still get less than the current Minimum Wage. The real value of winning this fairly narrow issue is that it could start the dominoes toppling, leading to the end of sub-Minimum Wage for everyone.
Second, exactly what authority the President has in this matter isn't a simple question to answer. I'm not saying he doesn't have the authority, I'm saying it isn't a "slam dunk". And unfortunately, the moral weight of the issue doesn't make any difference to the legal outcome. The reason why Presidential authority is so crucial is that it would be a much taller order to get Congress to act.
Another possibility that I wonder if anyone has explored is the courts. Make an Equal Protection argument that the 1930s-era 14(c) program is unconstitutional. I have no idea if that is at all feasible, but it's worth thinking about.
Finally, as Sarah Levis says in her blog post, the disability community, itself, is somewhat divided on whether sub-Minimum Wage should be an option. If you believe in your gut that lots of severely disabled people have no realistic hope for a "regular" job, then getting less than Minimum Wage might look like a better option than no job at all. Suddenly increasing pay for everyone in a sheltered workshop might blow up their business models, and put them out of business. That wouldn't break my heart, but it would create at least a short-term problem of how to help the people who would essentially lose their jobs.
Though frankly, I've heard this type of concern mostly from family members of disabled people, and rarely from the workers themselves. They know in their bones that that being paid less than Minimum Wage is unfair and humiliating, and it matters to them.
Though frankly, I've heard this type of concern mostly from family members of disabled people, and rarely from the workers themselves. They know in their bones that that being paid less than Minimum Wage is unfair and humiliating, and it matters to them.
I still think this is a critical equality issue, and that the President's Minimum Wage increase is a great opportunity to kick off fundamental change. But, it's not going to be easy, and the policy aspects of it aren't as clear as the ethics.
Wednesday, February 5, 2014
Practical Difficulties Of Being An Amputee
This week, AmputeeOT talks about some of the difficulties of being an amputee. Christina encourages people with disabilities to avoid comparing themselves to other disabled people who may seem to "have it all figured out". One disabled person's positivity should never be misused to shame another disabled person, or make them feel like they are somehow failing at being a "good" disabled person. Because we all have our moments!
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