The Divine Ms. Jimmi blogs:
Things like the special Olympics, Variety Club events, The Cure-A-Crip Telethon or some other fluffy piece about someone trying to overcome their disability (has it worked, are ya not disabled anymore?) gets big press. When people with disabilities take to the streets and say that the system is broken, we don;t want to live in your shitty institutions because the sight of us bothers you or that we want our rights along with choiuces that the mainstream public takes advantage of everyday–suddenly, we’re not so cute and inspirational.
yep, every time the Jerry Lewis Telethon comes around I am shocked beyond belief that this stuff still goes on, from such a bigotted, ignorant person who obviously has nothing but pure hatred for people with disabilities. Not to mention the completely innappropriate level of administrative problems the MDA has with its executives flying around in private jets. They do a good job of keeping their telethon in business. Meanwhile, not only aren’t people with MD cured, they often don’t get proper medical equipment or equal educational and other opportunities. No thanks to the pitiful coverage that MDA gives them. I still can’t believe celebrities will show their faces there. I can’t wait till that thing dies the death it deserved decades ago.
The MDA Telethon bothers me a great deal, and the MDA in general I have problems with, but I’ll admit I took $ to help pay for my latest pair of AFOs thankfully from the MDA since my co-pay for them would have been astronomical. So I feel hypocritical.
Kate L.,
We all do what we have to do to get by. If we didn’t accept help/funding/whatever from corrupt systems, whether that be health insurance companies or the MDA, a whole lot of us would be dead or extremely low functioning or ill, right? At least now we are still here and can still speak out.