Association's telethon is counterproductive

Jerry Lewis once said “if you don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house.” As a proud “cripple in a wheelchair,” I believe the Muscular Dystrophy Association’s Labor Day telethon is unbelievably outdated and needs to be euthanized.

By portraying people with disabilities as wretched, hopeless things that should be pitied, Lewis and the association are hindering the disability community. Just like racial and sexual identification, disability is a natural part of the human experience. The barrier to overcome is not the liability itself, but rather a society that is often discriminatory and inaccessible to people.

The telethon is counterproductive and transports society back into a dismal era of charity and medical models of thinking. Instead of validating organization that degrade people with disabilities, we, as a society, could endorse disabled athletes as athletes (instead of human interest stories), or give a platform for the many civiil rights violations that people with disabilities face.

I shake my head every time Lewis says something along the lines of, “My kids cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do. I’m begging for their survival.” Maybe I should reprimand all my friends (who happen to be attorneys, directors, and personal friends with the likes of senators and past presidents) that they should be “staying in their house.” After all, we kids cannot go into the workplace.

Stacey Milbern

Fayetteville