Reply #76: EXCUSE ME? [View All]

[Pastiche423]

That is what jerry lewis calls the disabled. Actually, that is probably one of the kindest thing he has ever said about the disabled.

"... I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway. I just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person..."

jerry lewis
September 2, 1990


http://www.cripcommentary.com/jlquotes.html


OTHER OBNOXIOUS COMMENTS MADE BY JERRY LEWIS

About his critics:

"It just kills me to think about these people getting publicity. These people are leeches. They all glommed on to being Jerry-bashers. What did they have before that? They're disabled people who are so bitter at the bad hand they've been dealt that they have to take down somebody who's doing good. There's 19 of them, but these people can hurt what I have built for 45 years. There's a million and a half people who depend on what I do!
"I've raised one billion three hundred million dollars. These 19 people don't want me to do that. They want me to stop now? Fuck them. Do it in caps. FUCK THEM."

About our friend Mike Ervin, co-founder of Jerry's Orphans:

"This one kid in Chicago woul have passed through this life and never had the opportunity to be acknowledged by anybody, but he found out that by being a dissident he gets picked up in a limo by a television station."

When a poster child gets squirmy during a photo shoot:

"What did he get for breakfast? A little Ritalin never hurt any kid."


During the 1991 MDA Telethon, Lewis said that if a person is diagnosed with the disability called amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS):

"You might as well put a gun in your mouth."


An excerpt: From Poster Child to Protester

But there we were, back in September 1991, on Denver's busy 16th Street Mall, challenging the Jerry Lewis Labor Day Muscular Dystrophy Telethon. Along with activists in cities around the country, including Chicago, Los Angeles, and Las Vegas, we were protesting the telethon's portrayal of people with disabilities as helpless and pathetic. We were asserting publicly that this colossal begging festival, supposedly carried out on our behalf, is offensive to us and damaging to our efforts to become first-class citizens. Our protests were small, but they would become an annual tradition -- much to the annoyance of Jerry Lewis and MDA.

For years we had been protesting against the barriers which keep people with disabilities from using buses, public buildings, and other facilities. Now we were taking on one of the biggest barriers of all: the paternalistic attitudes which prevail in our society, and which are reflected so dramatically in the annual telethon.

It is difficult to raise objections to something like the telethon; people are reluctant to disparage, or even entertain questions about, an effort which they perceive as fundamentally good, or at least well-meaning. That is understandable. It is an uncomfortable truth, in social work, in government activity, and in charitable endeavors, that actions which are intended to help a certain group of people may actually harm them. By harm, I mean -- among other things -- that these actions may reinforce the already devalued status of people with disabilities in this society. Looking closely and critically at the telethon, as some of us have started to do, brings up a number of issues which I feel are essential to understanding the status of people with disabilities as an oppressed minority group in America. These issues include: charity versus civil rights; cure versus accommodation; self-expression and self-determination; and the relationship between pity and bigotry.

http://www.cripcommentary.com/frompost.html

Such a great man - NOT!