worth the read...

"In a recently published NYT article, 'Clearly, Frankly, Unabashedly Disabled,' M. Navaro asserts that 'the public image of people with disabilities,' which 'often hinged on the heroic or the tragic,' is changing. Interviewed for the piece, actor and double amputee Robert David Hall, who plays a coroner on the CBS series CSI, observed, 'It used to be that if you were disabled and on television, they'd play soft piano music behind you.' I particularly like this observation because it gives a real insight into the packaging that people feel is necessary when presenting images of stories about the people we refer to as disabled. At once the same and the opposite of the shrieking violins in the shower scene of Psycho, it roots our reaction to what we are seeing away from thinking and directly toward emotion. the right score under the image of an attack dog could convince us we're looking at a puppy. It's dehumanizing and marginalizing and it's easy to see why, as Ms. Navaro in the Times pount out, people like Robert David Hall speak out. If society is encouraged to view you in a certain way, you come with theme music not of your choosing and perhaps not suited to your point of view. It's something you have to overcome with each encounter and experience. Why is this segment of the population responsible not only for how they feel, but how you feel about how they feel?

The Times article quotes K. Haddad, an amputee who'd been approached by a mother at a neighborhood pool who told her to put her prosthetic leg back on because it was 'upsetting my child.' the only explanation, if not excuse, for the thoughtlessness of this mother is fear. Unwilling or unable to explain disabilities to her daughter, she reacts to Ms. Haddad as though she were the transgressor. Yet it seems ridiculous to imagine a mother approaching an able-bodied woman at a pool and asking her to drape a towel over one of her legs because it's upsetting her amputee daughter."

-Michael J. Fox, Always Looking Up

Fabulous book with many thought provoking insights. I love his take on his disease and how it impacts his life. And he is a leader in the fight for funding for stem cell research. I am thankful for his voice on this and many other serious discussions surrounding people with different abilities.