Journalist – Historian – Speaker
On Fox News, yesterday, Mike Huckabee said this about incoming Chief of Staff John Kelly: “If you have four stars on your shoulder, you’re not a slow learner, you didn’t ride the short bus. He will be fine.” “Short bus” in this instance, is saying that Kelly is not intellectually disabled. In other words, it’s …
WARNING – VERY DISTURBING DEPICTIONS OF ABUSE This is what happens when the prison becomes the default first-line of care for people with serious mental health issues. This is what happens with prison guards grow up in a culture demeaning people with disabilities. This is what happens when you feed the cult of compliance. This …
[Content Note: Ableist Speech including use of the “r-word.” Later, I quote a passage from Huckleberry Finn that contains the n-word, not spelled out.] This post works with a 1996 piece from David Sedaris and This American Life that contains terrible depictions of the intellectually disabled. It was re-broadcast in 2013. I’d like to see content notes …
Yesterday, I published a piece on CNN focusing on an episode from This American Life that, I felt, mocked people with Down syndrome. What was interesting to me, though, is that the comedian in question (Wyatt Cenac) wasn’t just telling jokes using the r-word, but had something more complex going on. As a listener, it …