A recent diary entry made a joke about the disabled riding the short bus by referring to Bush as "riding the short limo". The joke apparently is that (1) George Bush is stupid, (2) kids that ride the short bus are stupid, (3) therefore George Bush must ride the short limo. This is exactly the kind of base discrimination and hatred that liberals should be fighting against.
I have a 9 year old son. He has Down syndrome. It is a disability that he struggles to overcome. He is deeply loved by everyone who is fortunate enough to get to know him. He is not stupid. My son should be shown respect for his abilities as well as the difficulties he faces in life. Not the least of these difficulties is being discriminated against because of his disability. We work hard to get school districts and government agencies to provide him with the services that will help him lead as normal a life as possible. But no matter how he ends up, as a human being he deserves our respect and not our disdain.
I have noticed more and more that insulting the disabled is acceptable. Even on television shows such as Saturday Night Live and The Winner, making jokes about Down syndrome or extra chromosomes generates little, if any, comment. Let these same shows insult a person because of their race, however, and there will be hell to pay! I suppose I wouldn't be so upset with the Kos community if it was just a lone diary entry but every comment but one laughed along with the diary writer and his 11-year old son. Is this what being liberal means? That disabled children are valid targets of abuse and disdain?
This is from the beginning of a speech given by high school senior, Soeren Palumbo who attends William Fremd High School in Palatine, Illinois.
I was walking through hallways, not minding my own business, listening to the conversations around me. As I passed the front door on my way to my English classroom, I heard this conversation between two girls nearby. The one girl leans to the other, pointing to the back of a young man washing the glass panes of the front door, and says, "Oh my gaw! I think it is so cute that our school brings in the black kids from around the district to wash our windows!" The other girl looked up and called to the window washer, easily loud enough for him to hear, "Hey, Negro! You missed a spot!" The young man did not turn around.
As it turns out, Soeren wasn't quite telling the truth. As he tells us later in his speech, the young man actually had Down syndrome and the actual comment made by the girl was, "Hey retard! You missed a spot." We can imagine how that must have hurt that young man.
I would like to finish up with another quote from Soeren's speech. Perhaps we can take this to heart and reject the kind of thinking that leads us to make fun of those who are disabled.
Maybe this has become more of an issue today because society is changing, slowly, to be sure, but changing nonetheless. The mentally handicapped aren't being locked in their family's basement anymore. The mentally handicapped aren't rotting like criminals in institutions. Our fellow human beings are walking among us, attending school with us, entering the work force with us, asking for nothing but acceptance, giving nothing but love. As we become more accepting and less hateful, more and more handicapped individuals will finally be able to participate in the society that has shunned them for so long.
Thanks for reading.