In an interview with the New York Post’s Page Six Magazine, comedian Sarah Silverman talks about her life, her program on Comedy Central, and her comic view of disability. An excerpt:

In one new episode, Sarah realizes she’s “retarded,” a plotline that, like most others on the show, will surely incense her critics. With regard to riling people up, Sarah shrugs. “I love retarded people,” she says. “A lot of the time, networks resist dealing with retardation at all in television, and I think it’s so much more insulting to not have them be a part of the world we’re reflecting than to risk offending not them, but advocates of them. They [people who are mentally challenged] are not offended.”

Earlier posts here.

Michael Arrington, writing in TechCrunch.com via the Washington Post, reports that comedian Sarah Silverman has agreed to donate her time to a Los Angeles-area fundraiser to benefit people with Down syndrome.

Proceeds from the March 6 benefit in Culver City, called TwentyWonder, will go to the Down Syndrome Association of Los Angeles.

Silverman stirred controversy last week when she appeared before an international audience at the exclusive TED conference and cracked jokes referencing the current debate about the use of the word “retard.” Here’s how CNN described her routine:

In front of an audience of Nobel laureates, mathematicians, artists, scientists and inventors, Silverman did not hold back on her edgy brand of comedy.

After talking about the merits of adoption and the problem of overpopulation, Silverman joked on stage that she wants to adopt a “retarded” child with a terminal disease.

[Note: A writer on Salon.com said the term Silverman used was "terminally ill retard."]

That would earn her sympathy points, she said. But, because the child would die soon, she said she wouldn’t have to be stuck with the burden for too long.

In a video on the CNN site, Silverman explains her approach to comedy and says there is one category of humor that strikes her as offensive and unfair.

“I don’t really care for like fat jokes about women, specifically,” she said.

“Because I feel that we live in a society where fat men deserve love, and fat women do not deserve love — at least in white America. And so I feel like that’s an ugly thing, and it doesn’t make me laugh.”

In response to questions about Silverman’s upcoming appearance at TwentyWonder, DSALA board president Gina Vivona sent out the attached response. An excerpt:

It is DSALA’s position that we will treat people like we wish to be treated; with acceptance, respect, and understanding. Within those guiding principles, our goal is to extend the reach of our community by building relationships, providing education and increased awareness whenever possible.

There are many ways to be heard. One is to show people who don’t understand just how amazing our community members with Down syndrome are.

(Image from CNN video)

From the Huffington Post:

Bill Maher offers the following joke in the promo for the upcoming debut of his eighth season of HBO’s “Real Time.”

While we were off, Sarah Palin agreed to do commentary at Fox News, which is actually very similar to her day job: talking to a baby with Down syndrome. (The studio audience groans, then applauds).

The site carries the video, and the joke appears at about the 1:22 mark.

Related posts here.

From Michael Arrington at Techcrunch.com via the Washington Post. Also, MediaPost.com, HuffingtonPost.com:

Appearing at the exclusive TED conference in California last week, comedian Sarah Silverman performed a routine that made liberal use of the word “retarded,” web sources are saying.

The gist of her remarks: She said she’d like to adopt a “special needs child” so that people would think she was an “awesome person,” but she’s concerned that a “retarded child” would never leave the nest. So she’s decided that she would adopt a “retarded child with a terminal illness so it has an expiration date.”

The TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) conference draws heavy hitters from around the globe, and is devoted to what it calls “ideas worth spreading.” In addition to Silverman, speakers this year included Bill Gates and James Cameron. Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Gordon Brown have appeared in past years.

Silverman’s routine drew criticism from conference organizer Chris Anderson, who twittered that he thought it was “god-awful.” Anderson later “admitted he was out of line,” reports Mediapost.com.

Arrington writes that Silverman, who has built a career challenging taboos, was…

“following suit behind Megan McCain and Stephen Colbert in making fun of Sarah Palin. She didn’t say this, but I knew this. Why did I know this? Because this is a trend with comedians right now and I know why they are doing it. They are doing it for a cause. They don’t want that word turned into the “R word”. Saying the word “retarded” can only have extreme negative power if you let it and Sarah Silverman is brave, because she got on stage in front of some global minds and dropped it over and over and over.”

Silverman was among celebrities featured last year in MTV’s “How’s Your News?” a comedy/reality show in which reporters with disabilities traveled the country in search of news.

(Photo from www.ted.com)

From the Washington Post, a report that Rahm Emanuel will join the campaign to end use of ‘R-word.’  The White House chief of staff apologized for using the word “retarded” during a meeting last year, and told a group of disability rights advocates that he will join their campaign to discourage the use of the word. The story described Emanuel as “the sometimes foul-mouthed senior Obama adviser.”

Special Olympics chairman Tim Shriver and five other advocates said Emanuel had “sincerely apologized.”  An excerpt:

“We are happy that he will join more than 54,000 other Americans in pledging to end the use of the R-word at www.r-word.org, and that he committed that the administration would continue to look for ways to partner with us, including examining pending legislation in Congress to remove the R-word from federal law,” they said in the statement.

Other coverage:

On ABC News (video), Bill Weir takes a closer look at the history and significance of the ‘R-word.” He reports that the word had been used by professionals as a sensitive alternative to terms like “idiot,” “imbecile” and “moron” to describe patients, but has increasingly come to to be seen as offensive. Forty-four states have renamed their departments of mental retardation and federal legislation would strip the word from federal regulations. But there are some who defend the term and Rahm Emanuel’s use of it, he says.

“We might sanitize one word, but then another one is going to pop up in its place. It’s all about the attitude toward that group and the culture,” said Georgetown University linguistics professor Deborah Tannen.

Rush Limbaugh used the word repeatedly in his national radio broadcast. On his website, the transcript appears under the headline “The president’s chief of staff apologizes to ‘f — ing retards.’” An excerpt: (more…)

Best-selling author and animal scientist Temple Grandin, well known for her work advancing the humane treatment of cattle, is again the focus of media attention as the subject of an upcoming HBO biopic, to be aired in February.

She’s played by actress Claire Danes (left, as Grandin).

Dr. Grandin has written and spoken widely about her life as a person with autism.

On NPR, Talk of the Nation’s Neal Conan conducts an extended interview with Grandin.  “You may also know that she is autistic and spends a lot of her time explaining how that makes her different, not less,” he says. “You may not know how she avoided being institutionalized as a young girl, how she learned the social skills to engage the world, and how she overcame bullies, skeptics, ignorance, and her own fears to make a real difference in the world. An excerpt of the interview:

CONAN: And I wonder, did HBO get the story right?

Dr. GRANDIN: Yes, Claire Danes was just brilliant in playing me. The movie is all in the ’60s and the ’70s, when I was a lot more autistic acting and when I first started my work.

CONAN: There’s a picture of you on the Web standing next to Claire Danes at a premier, at the screening of this film in New York last night.

Dr. GRANDIN: Well, the thing was amazing is how Claire totally changed into me. You know, if you look at her from a picture from last night at party you’d never think that, you know, that she could become like me. I mean, shes just amazing, and how she totally turns into the character that she’s acting.

New York Times writer Rick Lyman interviews Claire Danes, and says she “manages to be both emotionally transparent and intelligently complex” in the role.

(Photos from New York Times)

By Anna Pickard in the [UK] Guardian

Extraordinary Measures, starring Brendan Fraser and Harrison Ford, features “a sad dad’s relentless efforts to fund a maverick medic’s search for a cure for his terminally ill kiddies.” The film was “inspired by” the story of John Crowley, a New Jersey dad who worked to find a cure for Pompe’s disease, a rare genetic disorder.

An excerpt:

The tagline is important in Extraordinary Measures. It appears right at the end of the trailer: “Don’t hope for a miracle. Make one.”

This could refer to many things. Conquering the apparently unconquerable through the power of the human spirit alone is a common enough theme at the movies. Or it could refer to a blatant attempt to win some award -– any award, but preferably a big, shiny, person-shaped one -– by an on-the-wane actor.

Extraordinary Measures will be released later this month.

Crowley and his family were featured in the book “The Cure: How a Father Raised $100 Million — and Bucked the Medical Establishment — in a Quest to Save His Children,” by Geeta Anand, which in turn started as a front-page story in the Wall Street Journal.