By Lisa de Moraes in the Washington Post:

Actor Patrick Warburton, who voices a character in “Family Guy,” told TV critics Wednesday that he objected to the show’s recent gag about Sarah Palin.

“I know it’s satire but, personally, that [joke] bothered me too,” Warburton said on a conference call to promote his other primetime show, CBS’s sitcom “Rules of Engagement,” which returns for a fourth season on March 1. (On “Family Guy” Warburton does the voice of the wheelchair-bound police officer, Joe.)

“I know that you have to be an equal-opportunity offender, but there are some things that I just don’t think are funny.”

Earlier posts here.

By Dana Goldstein at thedailybeast.com:

As Sarah Palin attempts to position herself as a national spokesperson on issues related to disability, disability rights leaders say they view her with skepticism. Palin, they say, is out of step or silent on most of their policy priorities. But some still hold out hope that she may yet approach their issues in a serious fashion.

“Since the end of the presidential election, we haven’t heard Sarah Palin articulate any specific policy proposals [on disability],” said Peter Berns, CEO of The Arc, a Beltway lobbying group representing people with intellectual disabilities. Like nine other national disability-rights leaders The Daily Beast spoke to, Berns pointed to Palin’s excusing of Rush Limbaugh’s use of the word “retarded”—even as she hammered Emanuel, President Obama’s chief of staff, for the same sin—as evidence of her lack of seriousness. “It has unfortunately politicized the issue in ways that are not productive, and it has converted what really are bipartisan issues into partisan ones,” Berns said.

See also: Palin, really a special needs advocate? — MSNBC

(Photo from thedailybeast.com)

Company sees threat to free speech on the Internet

From Reuters/New York Times, AP/Forbes.com, CNN:

A judge in Milan has found three Google executives guilty of criminal privacy violation charges for allowing a cellphone video of the bullying of an Italian youth to be displayed on a company website in 2006.

Press reports said the video showed the boy, described as having Down syndrome or autism, being taunted by classmates while one of the teens made a mock phone call to a Down syndrome support group.

A Google spokesman said the company would appeal what it called an “astonishing” decision, and said the case posed a threat to freedom of speech on the Internet.

Prosecutors said the case was not about censorship, but about balancing freedom of expression with the rights of an individual. They said the video remained online for months even though some web users had posted comments asking that it be taken down. Google said it removed the video within hours of being notified by police.

The three defendants received six-month suspended sentences for privacy violation. They were acquitted of charges of defamation, as was a fourth executive. All had denied wrongdoing. In an earlier action in juvenile court, the four bullies were sentenced to community service.

From Tom Brokaw, NBC News, a feature about American athlete Kevin Pearce, who was considered one of the best snowboarders bound for the Olympics until he was gravely injured in a training run. He sustained a traumatic brain injury, and is now working to regain his speech, vision and physical coordination.

Brokaw says Pearce has a “special relationship” with his brother, David, who has Down syndrome, a “kindness and patience” that the family has drawn upon during its recent crisis. Pearce’s mother says the wisdom she gained from David helped prepare her to cope with Kevin’s accident and recovery.

” I had never realized before this happened that the great gift of David in our life has been to prepare me for this experience,” she said. “And I feel way better equipped to deal with this thanks to having had David in our life for 24 years.”

UPDATE: A Facebook page honoring Kevin Pearce has garnered almost 44,000 fans as of Wednesday morning. Notes Sports Illustrated:

The site has received notes of support from fans and fellow snowboarders, but also from many survivors of traumatic brain injuries who have described the productive lives they now lead.

There’s also a Facebook page created by fans of David Pearce.

(Photo from NBC News)

Site advocated using kids with Down syndrome for target practice

From Reuters, New York Time,  Agence France Press:

Italy’s equality minister threatened legal action against the “thousands of idiots” involved in an Italian Facebook group that called for children with Down syndrome to be used for target practice.

The page, which has been shut down in the wake of public outrage, proposed the activity as an “easy and amusing” solution to rid the world of “these foul creatures.” It carried a photo of a baby with Down syndrome, with the word “imbecile” written on its forehead. As of late Sunday, the page had attracted 1,700 members.

“Italy will not tolerate incidents of discrimination of any sort, let alone against the disabled,” Equality Minister Mara Carfagna told Italian television Tuesday. “Those responsible for creating this madness will be prosecuted by the law.”

The outrage over the Facebook site comes as four Google executives are on trial in Milan facing criminal charges of defamation and privacy violations in a case involving videos posted on a Google website. The videos show a boy with autism being bullied by peers. Prosecutors allege that the company should have removed the videos after it was made aware of their content.

Google representatives say a guilty verdict might require the company to review content before allowing it to be posted on YouTube.

Chicago Sun-Times columnist Neil Steinberg says the word “retarded” may have started out as a clinical term, but it has been twisted into a taunt over the past half century and should be put to rest.

Were developmentally disabled people secure in the mainstream alongside the Irish and accountants, we could happily debate the cultural desirability of mocking them. But given that recognizing their full humanity is a fairly recent development, it seems that we should at least acknowledge that ridicule, though funny in entertainment, is destructive on a personal level.

…In 1953, Dale Evans, wife of cowboy star Roy Rogers, penned a book, Angel Unaware, about their daughter Robin, who was born with Down syndrome. Doctors told her to have Robin institutionalized. Instead Evans, inspired by her deep Christian faith, posed the little girl in family publicity photos. The book sold 400,000 copies in the mid-1950s, and parents who otherwise never let their children out of the house felt comfortable bringing them to Roy Rogers rodeos, because of his wife’s book.

They felt safe there.

I believe that any person with a heart, facing this complex issue, would rather err on the side of those children, would want them, not merely to get out of the house to see a cowboy show, but to also go to school with other kids and work at a job, if they could, still safe and accepted, without their lives being made a hell by would-be wits looking for someone to abuse.

From the Washington Post, [Norfolk] Virginian-Pilot:

As detractors organized an online petition calling for his resignation, Republican Virginia state delegate Bob Marshall apologized for public remarks suggesting that women who have abortions risk having children with disabilities as a punishment from God.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion who have handicaps has increased dramatically,” Marshall said last week at a news conference calling for an end to state funding for Planned Parenthood. “Why? Because when you abort the firstborn of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children.”

“In the Old Testament, the firstborn of every being, animal and man, was dedicated to the Lord,” he added. “There’s a special punishment Christians would suggest …”

In a statement on his website, Marshall said he regretted his “poorly chosen words.”

He said his broader point was that published medical research suggests abortion raises the risk of miscarriage and birth defects in subsequent pregnancies, and that those findings echo the Bible’s teaching that abortion is wrong.

“I’m saying look at the medical journals,” said Marshall, who produced two studies to buttress his contention. “That’s not saying ‘Bob Marshall thinks a Down syndrome baby is a punishment.’ “

UPDATE: Press release from The Arc: Arc of VA families outraged by elected official’s remark