Cheers and Jeers: Teenager with Disability Meets NY Yankees and "X-Files" Mulder Perpetuates Bad Stereotype

By Unknown - created in Adobe Illustrator by user SixFourThree, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7888984

CHEERS!! to the MLB NY Yankees

A North Carolina high school senior traveled to New York yesterday to fulfill a lifelong dream: to see his Major League Baseball idols -- the New York Yankees -- play at Yankee Stadium.  This was made possible by his classmates.  But he got more than he expected, because he got to meet the team members in person.  Watch this video or read the story from ABC Eyewitness News in New York City

Fox Broadcasting Company - US logo for The X-Files. MoviePosterDb.com (December 6, 2009). Retrieved on September 18, 2012.

JEERS!! to Agent Mulder of "The X-Files" [actually, the writers]

Talk about things that make you go "Grrr".  A character on a popular TV show with a cult following like the global favorite "X-Files" perpetuating the stereotype that People with Disabilities [PWDs] can be excused for a substandard work ethic, is deplorable.  What's even worse:  there are still employers who won't hire a PWD because they think a PWD can't do a job as well as an able-bodied hire or won't be reliable and dependable.  We won't even get into the statistics and studies that show that PWDs tend to be more productive and reliable than their able-bodied counterparts.  And, there are still HR people out there who are afraid to hire PWDs because there is a bigger likelihood they will be sued, or because making certain accommodations will be too costly.  Although I am not in the job market like much-younger PWDs, I have suffered enough attitudinal barriers to allow me to appreciate how difficult those barriers must be when they are barriers to earning a living and enjoying independence rather than depending on public assistance!  

Check out this article about "Attitudinal Barriers" we PWDs face and how they can affect every area of our lives, but especially the right to earn a living on the website of the National Collaborative on Workforce and Disability. If you are a PWD, you will nod at prejudices you recognize; if you are able-bodied, you might see attitudes listed that you never realized existed in yourself -- if you are prepared to admit it.  And, ask yourself, if you were to substitute the words "African-American", "Hispanic", "Gay" or "Woman" in place of PWD, would these attitudes be okay?

"This is Us" Episode Teaches Us to Slow Down; I Wish I Could Talk to My Neighbors

photo credit : By Ralf Roletschek - Own work, GFDL 1.2, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=52691236


If you haven't caught the NBC show "This Is Us" yet, you should.  Last time I looked, Spectrum [my cable company ] had the entire first season on their On Demand list.  The second season hasn't started yet, so there is still ample time to catch up.

If you are familiar with the show, you can skip this paragraph. If not, allow me to give a quick orientation.  The show is about a couple who has triplets.  Well, not really in a technical sense; you see, one dies at birth, and they now have a set of twins, or ⅔ of a set of triplets.  But on the day of their birth, into the hospital comes a fireman with a baby who was abandoned at his firehouse.  The abandoned baby is African-American, while the couple and their two fraternal "twins" -- one female and one male-- are white.  The couple decides to take home the African-American baby to complete their intended trio.  Besides, the wife has knitted three "onesies" which sport the words "big three" for the babies to wear home from the hospital.  And one could say it was fate that a fireman has dropped off an abandoned baby just when they lost one.  You could say it was meant to be.

Fast forward to the present. Roland [the formerly abandoned triplet, now all grown up], has recently located his biological dad William.  William is dying of cancer, so Roland and his wife take him in to their home.  After a few weeks, William dies and Roland and his family give William a proper sendoff.  Fortunately, Roland and William have bonded and thus made William's final days fulfilling and rewarding.

At the funeral, Roland receives a box of pears from his employers at the financial firm where he has worked for decades, and where he has been disillusioned of late by his boss' admiration of a younger newer millennial hire.  Roland has been disgusted by his firm's shoving-aside and lack of respect for him lately.  Then, they show almost total disregard for his recent bereavement.  And, as icing on the cake, they know he is allergic to pears, and a box of them has been their only acknowledgment of Roland's loss.  But then, Roland gets a pleasant surprise:  the mailman comes to make his daily delivery and Roland meets him at the door.  The mailman then gives Roland his condolences and tells Roland that he will miss William.  You see, as Roland comes to find out, every morning William would take a nice long walk around the neighborhood.  And, every morning he would stop and have a conversation with the mailman, which the mailman now tells Roland he will miss very much.  In just a few weeks, he has made an impact.  Roland realizes that he has had the same mailman for years and never learned his name [William has] and has never said more than a passing hello to his longtime mailman .  You can watch the gut-wrenching scene by clicking here

So the following day, Roland marches into his office and resigns.  But before he does, he gives them an earful.  First of all, he walks in on a very important meeting at which his boss and the aforementioned underling are present, but to which Roland has not been invited.  So Roland tells them that he has loyally given his life to this firm and all they could do to offer condolences upon his father's death, was to send a box of pears, a fruit they KNEW he is allergic to.  When his boss asks Roland where he is going now, Roland says something to the effect of "I don't know.  Maybe I'll take a little time off.  Maybe I'll take a nice slow and long walk in the morning. Maybe I will stop and talk to the mailman".  Needless to say, the men in the meeting all have perplexed looks on their faces.  But we the viewers know exactly what he means.  He has been so wrapped up in his job and giving it his free time, that he doesn't even know the man who has been delivering mail to his home every day for the last umpteen years. And they didn't even take the time to acknowledge a life-changing event in his life.

How many of us have done the same thing?  How many of us have been so wrapped up in our lives and the hectic-ness, we don't even notice what is around us?  I knew a lady whom I worked with, who had ovarian cancer.  She said to me before she died "We don't take time to smell the flowers".  I would like to take the time -- now that spring is finally here -- to smell the flowers, hear the birds sing, and watch the people in my neighborhood and even in my building whose names I don't know.  I wish I could speak without people running away and putting a frightened look on their faces.  Once I tried to ask my FEDEX man if he had a package for me.  He turned to me and yelled "What the hell is your problem?"  I wish people were not so afraid of what they don't understand.  And I wish I could still have a conversation and meet the neighbors who have moved into my building in the last 13 years.

Why the TV Show "Speechless" is Important to Me and Should Be for Everyone -- Disabled or Not

WHAT I'M WATCHING:    "SPEECHLESS"  [ABC TV NETWORK]

People With Disabilities (PWDs) are the last marginalized people to gain respect.  We have made so many inroads in the developed, industrialized world with race, religion and sexual orientation and identification.  Many people and legislators still wish to lock us up in institutions and keep us out of sight .  Although there has been great progress in enabling PWDs to live in the community, we still have a long way to go.  If I didn't navigate the system the way I did, and push for transition to a self-directed care model [Concepts of Independence in my case], I would otherwise be living in an institution or getting care through an agency.  An agency controls everything -- when and where you can go-- and if you can go -- outside the home, and even whom they send to care for you [in some cases, with very little input from PWD or family]

"Speechless" is so important to me because it not only features an actor who really has a disability and shows that "speechless" is not synonymous with "infantile". The show also deals with the concept of "inclusion".  When I became disabled in January, 2004, I was shut out of activities by many able-bodied people, sometimes by inaccessibility of venues or lack of accessible transportation, but often by well-meaning "friends" who thought I would be uncomfortable around "normal" people.  Sometimes I am invited, only to be invisible-- left out of the conversation or even ignored or stuck in a corner by myself.  This show should be watched by everyone, especially by misguided people who have told me "Maybe there's a group or club you can join that's more for people 'like you' " [this was actually said to me more than once].  Get out of your comfort zone -- watch it; it's actually funny.  I give you permission to laugh.

"Speechless" features a family with an adolescent with Cerebral Palsy. There's a mouthy mom-- Maya Dimeo, who is a flawless advocate and played brilliantly by Minnie Driver.  She is the perfect advocate for JJ, even pointing out when well-meaning gestures are insulting.  In the first episode, she asks for a ramp so JJ can get into his school and she goes on a rant when she is led to a ramp which also doubles as a trash conduit.  I can relate to this, since often when I ask for a ramp, I am led to a rear door alongside trash and service entrances.  In my own residential building, I haven't seen my lobby in at least 10 years; I have to enter and exit through the basement.  Especially in older buildings that have been retrofitted, we are segregated.

I love when my caregivers and friends speak up for me in the face of injustice.  Despite my inability to express myself clearly at the moment of impact, I have learned the fine art of patience and diplomacy in protesting after-the-fact.  I write letters and emails, and make relay calls.  I used to shoot off my mouth at the moment of the injustice.  That proved to be ineffective at times and even counter-productive, since tempers are often high at that minute and I tended to say harsh things I sometimes later regretted.  Also, sometimes the person you yell at, isn't the one who can make a change and sometimes is a lower-level worker who isn't very educated in discussing protests in a civil way, especially in the middle of his workday.  And even more likely, as in the recent case of a friend arguing with a paratransit driver, you find yourself in debate with a recent immigrant whose English language skills are not the best and/or can't or won't take direction from a woman.  

But in "Speechless", Minnie Driver is a funny angry person and shows how we can laugh at a life that can also be referred to as a tragedy.

What Do You Think? Should This Ad be Banned?

My friend Sarah Ezekiel is a PALS who lives in London. There is a TV ad she starred in, a public service announcement from the MND Association in the UK. MND stands for Motor Neuron Disease, which is what ALS/Lou Gehrig's Disease is called outside of North America. The ad is disturbing, but no more disturbing than the PSAs for stop-smoking campaigns, which show people with laryngectomy holes in their throats, shots of rotting lungs, and people gasping for air. You can read the article [link above] from a UK newspaper, and you can watch the video at this link

Disturbing? Yes. It's supposed to be. Scary? Of course. But you can turn the video or the TV off. We can't turn off ALS/MND. Why is this disease so scary to people? I'd be interested in getting feedback from people, especially from people who don't live ALS/MND firsthand, like patients and caregivers.

Mad Men: Not the Beaver Cleaver 60s

Interesting article about my favorite TV show "Mad Men". What do you think? Is its depiction of the 60s accurate? To me, it seems so, although I didn't grow up in the executive-dad world, and my mom was not the wife of a white-collar man. She was a stay-at-home mom and smoked while she was pregnant!

Who is This Man?

Answer to the quiz from last time:




Okay, so in my last entry, I posted a picture of a very distinguished-looking middle-aged man, and I asked you who he is.






yep, Mike Nesmith of the Monkees, who is living very nicely off his mom's fortune. Betty Nesmith, Mike's mom, was the secretary who invented liquid paper!