Hello,
I am now a professor at University of Wisconsin-La Crosse in the DPT
program. We, another professor and I, were talking about people without
disabilities and the attitudes that we may develop towards individuals with
disabilities. With your permission, I would like to forward Gary's and
Kendall's comments to her. She may or may not use your comments in class.
I think both of you raise very valid points that need to be considered when
respecting individuals with disabilities. We as people without disabilities
should not minimize your capabilities and physical impairments, but at the
same time we should realize how your physical disability may or may not
affect your life, activity, and participation in society.
I hope I did not make too much of a generalization that may offend anyone.
I hope I make sense in my generalization and my small rant. Also, I hope I
did not offend anyone with my joining in and contribution to this
discussion.
Thank you,
Greta
On 10/19/06, Kendall David Corbett <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
>
> Gary, your last sentence distilled my thoughts about most (not all)
> media portrayal of disability perfectly, especially Jerry Lewis and the
> other pityathons!
>
>
> >"Thank God!! Another problem wiped away in an hour,=20
> >and ain't we glad when we go to bed at night that=20
> >we ain't disabled."
>
>
> Kendall=20
>
> An unreasonable man (but my wife says that's redundant!)
>
> The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one
> persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore, all
> progress depends on the unreasonable man.
>
> -George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Gary Peterson [mailto:[log in to unmask]]=20
> Sent: Wednesday, October 18, 2006 11:45 PM
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: [C-PALSY] Extreme Home Makeover
>
> I watched part of this - but didn't see that he got an augmentive=20
> 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.=20
> 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=20
> 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:=20
> "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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