In charity skit, Paterson mocks wheelchair ad
April 22nd, 2009From New York Daily News: The Daily Politics blog, Newsday, and WCBS-TV, with video from the Daily News:
New York Governor David Paterson, who recently criticized Saturday Night Live for making fun of his disability, turned the tables this weekend.
The governor, who is legally blind, appeared in a wheelchair at an Albany charity dinner to satirize a series of commercials in which people with disabilities chided him over proposed health care spending cuts. The skit ended with the governor rising from the wheelchair and doing a cartwheel, landing within inches of the edge of the stage.
The original union-backed ad campaign featured a blind man seated in a wheelchair asking the governor, “Why are you doing this to me?” In his parody, a whiny Paterson as Juan Pietri demands 24-hour media coverage of the governor.
“Governor Paterson, what have you done to me!” Paterson wails, in character. “I can’t pay my bills. I can’t put food on the table . . . and the reason, Governor Paterson, is you haven’t given the state . . . transparency!”
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April 22nd, 2009 at 11:55 pm
Last December Governor Paterson responded to the SNL skit that lampooned him and his disability in the NY Times saying, “There is only one way that people could have an unemployment rate that’s six times the national average — it’s attitude.”
“And I’m afraid that the kind of third-grade depiction of individuals and the way they look and the way they move add to that negative environment. I run the place that I work in so I don’t have to worry about being discriminated against, I think,” he said. “But the point is that a lot of people who don’t get promotions and don’t get opportunities and don’t even get work are disabled in our society.”
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/15/nyregion/15skit.html?_r=3&hp=&adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1229343112-vS3XDLIv+ouayFNnuU7CFw
After watching the video of Gov Paterson lampooning people who use wheelchairs in the skit he performed at the charity fundraiser in Albany, I’m compelled to ask:
Gov Paterson, do you think we’re not paying attention to your jaw-dropping insensitivity and hypocrisy?