I watched part of this - but didn't see that he got an augmentive
communications device - did ABC give him one? I know the main
focus was on his mother and the Little League baseball team, but I
did think they should have thought of enabling him to communicate
his needs - after all, his mother isn't going to be around forever,
ascruel as that sounds.
Kat
Kat,
The point you make here is by no means cruel. I have lots of
reaction from watching this. This was my first time watching the
show. Generally I stay away from all these reality shows just
because they all want us to believe they can take a sad or
unfortunate situation and make it all better in an hours time. I
think we all no, it just ain't so. The only reason I watched it
was because of Anthony's recommendation.
Now I'm far from even half way knowledgeable when it comes to
building a house, but I have to think even with all those
volunteers working together, it had to take a minimum of 6 months
to do what all those people did. Speaking of time, does anyone
here know how long the entire show took to finish? I'm guessing
lots longer then ABC would like us to believe. And let us not
forget the probably tons of material that didn't make the final
cut.
I give the show high praise because in the end, it did what it set
out to do. I mean the family got their house and I guess that was
the bottom line. What bothers me is how the show chose to get
there. I will probably take a lot of heat for what I'm about to
say here, but so be it.
After watching the first 10 minutes or so, I felt as if I were
watching something straight out of the Jerry Lewis telethon. In
the beginning we get introduced to Aaron and his family. Then the
host of the show spends waaay to much time telling Mom how great
and wonderful she is because of all she does for Aaron. As much as
they tried to show us that Aaron was just your average 14 year old,
sadly I for one was left with just the opposite feeling. I think
the message was very deliberately designed to say:
"here's this severely disabled kid, and we want to keep pounding
that point into you are audience at home, so whatever you do
don't change the channel, because by the end of our show, are
friend Aaron and his Mom will magically be able to sweep Aaron's
disability under the rug, and we can all go home and live happily
ever after, and won't we from Extreme Makeover be really cool."
I also thought the show put to much emphasis on Aaron and his Mom.
I wanted to know lots more about the relationship between him and
the rest of his family. More interaction between Aaron and his
brother and sister. For those of you who don't know me, as well
has having C-P, I'm also totally blind. So before watching the
show, I thought of having my Supported Living staff watch the show
with me. But after having it on for the first 5 minutes, I decided
there was enough dialog and sound so I let myself just imagine the
visuals on my own. So There's a chance there were visual parts
that may have addressed some of my above concerns.
This show might have had great potential. But with the media's
across the board attitude towards disability, in my view it fell
way short of the mark. Once again the media has left those nice
average Americans who would rather take their queues about what it
meansto be disabled from people like Jerry Lewis and his kids with
a feeling of:
"Thank God!! Another problem wiped away in an hour, and ain't we
glad when we go to bed at night that we ain't disabled."
Thanks to all for reading my rant.
Gary
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