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.

From the New Zealand Herald:

Special Olympics New Zealand is calling on the nation’s Broadcasting Standards Authority to deem the word “retard” unacceptable after television personality Paul Henry used the word to describe Scottish singer Susan Boyle in a broadcast.

… Henry laughed while reading from a magazine article about how the Britain’s Got Talent singer was starved of oxygen at birth and suffered an intellectual disability.

“Here’s the really interesting revelation: she is in fact retarded …

“And if you look at her carefully, you can make it out,” he said.

Special Olympics New Zealand chairman David Rutherford said using “retard” to describe intellectually disabled people was as hurtful as racial slurs like “nigger” and “kike”.

See also: Media critic says Henry’s jab was a publicity stunt — New Zealand Herald

” … the most worrying thing about TVNZ and Henry is their comments are not a slip of the tongue, but aimed at boosting his brand and appealing to the mean-spirited.”

From Associated Press/USA Today and Reuters:

The United Nations has appointed musician Stevie Wonder as a United Nations Messenger of Peace. He will will focus on helping to improve life for the estimated 650 million people with disabilities – about 10% of the world’s population.

UN representatives said the singer-songwriter, who has won 25 Grammy awards, is being recognized for his philanthropic work with the U.S. President’s Committee on Employment of People with Disabilities, the Children’s Diabetes Foundation and Junior Blind of America.

Wonder was born in Saginaw, Michigan, in 1950 and became blind shortly after birth.

(Getty Images photo from USA Today)

UPDATE from AP:

Referring to the 650 million people with disabilities, Wonder said, “It is beyond my ability to fathom that 10 percent of the people of this world don’t matter to the other 90 percent of the people in the world.”

“I would hope that every single human being, and every single world leader, will commit themselves to making this world a better place and accessible for every single human being on this planet,” he said.

See also: Wonder promotes message of peace — CNN

Earlier post: UN says huge barriers remain for people with disabilities

Sports Illustrated writer Selena Roberts nominates Eunice Kennedy Shriver for the magazine’s Sportsman of the Year award. An excerpt:

Without her relentless lobbying, it is very possible that those with mental challenges would still be hidden from view, institutionalized instead of embraced. Without her access to the halls of political power, those children who lived life being called “retards” by the misinformed and unfeeling wouldn’t have had a voice.

… There was no pretense to Eunice Kennedy Shriver, the fifth of nine children of Joseph and Rose Kennedy. She had a vision unclouded by what others believed, by how society stereotyped the mentally disabled, by the conventional norm of sports. She was all effort in altering the view, a sporting woman sustained by the joy of winning against misperception — just like the athletes she championed.

(AP/SI photo)

From ABC News (with video):

Actress Glenn Close and her sister, Jessie Close, are appearing in a national ad campaign aimed at countering stima and providing support to people with mental illness. Jessie Close has bipolar disorder.

In the ad for the nonprofit BringChange2Mind, Jessie Close wears a t-shirt that says “bipolar;” Glenn Close’s shirt says “sister.”

… “Mental illness is just part of the human condition,” the actress said on “Good Morning America,” adding that her family hopes that the sisters’ campaign will help foster a dialogue about a condition that we should “talk about as openly as cancer or diabetes.”

See also:

Mental Illness: The stigma of silence, by Glenn Close in the Huffington Post

An excerpt:

What mental health needs is more sunlight, more candor, more unashamed conversation about illnesses that affect not only individuals, but their families as well. Our society ought to understand that many people with mental illness, given the right treatment, can be full participants in our society.

(Photo from ABC News video)