In this week’s episode of Fox’s ‘Glee’, cheerleading coach Sue Sylvester (Jane Lynch)  instructs her Cheerios squad on the preferred method for losing weight: Bulimia. Here’s the dialogue from her scene with Cheerio Becky Jackson (played by actress Lauren Potter, who has Down syndrome).

Becky (standing on a scale): I lost two pounds, coach.

Sue: Well, Becky, you are assimilating beautifully. Instead of being different and an outcast, you’re just like every other teenage girl in America: sadly obsessed with vanity. Hey, before you know it, you’ll be leaving little baggies of upchuck in your parents’ linen closet.  Congrats. I’m proud of you, kid.

Becky: Thanks, coach.

Writing in the [UK] Sunday Times, columnist India Knight hails a mother of a 5-year-old with Down syndrome who challenged Scottish standup comedian Frankie Boyle over a comedy routine. Boyle, who is known for his crude humor, referred to “Mongoloids” who have bowl haircuts and are “destined for an early death”. He recently piloted a television show in Britain called “Deal with this, Retards.”

Boyle, Knight says,

… isn’t even enough of a man to offer up an apology. Sharon Smith, on the other hand, is a heroine – for standing up for her daughter and, by extension, for the growing number of children with Down’s, for pointing out to Mr Hilarious that the verbal equivalent of kicking the spastic around the playground won’t do any more.

See also:

• Making light of disability — BBC
• Frankie Boyle criticized for Down syndrome jokes — BBC

In a Washington Post profile of Tim Shriver, writer Manuel Roig-Franzia examines the Special Olympics chairman’s campaign to discourage language that makes fun at the expense of people with intellectual disabilities.

Shriver has received apologies from President Obama, White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel and Bill O’Reilly (sort of) for “colloquial jabs about ‘retards’ or quips that equate Special Olympians with ineptitude or remarks that equate “retarded” with stupidity.”

To Shriver, the discussion is more than a mere linguistic fight, writes Roig-Franzia; it’s a welcome opportunity to have a public conversation about what Shriver terms the “humiliation” faced by this population.

The crusade has brought both admiration and derision for Shriver, who will soon be the only member of the Kennedy family serving in a high-profile position in Washington. An excerpt:

… Shriver — who wants to be a catalyst for social change — would like to further expand the mission [of Special Olympics], addressing unemployment (90 percent of people with intellectual disabilities do not work, he says, but half of Special Olympians have jobs) and taking on elite private schools in Washington, such as his alma mater, St. Albans, and Sidwell Friends because they don’t routinely admit students with intellectual disabilities, as many public schools do.

But there are only so many fights to pick at once. In Bethesda, Shriver helps organize “unified” sports contests that place young people with disabilities on the same teams as those who don’t. At the same time, he has sent his own kids to top private schools, such as Maret, that he says are not “inclusive” and guesses he “could be accused of being hypocritical. But this is a 100-front war.”

(Photo from the Washington Post; More photos here.)

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.

Lennard Davis, writing at Huffingtonpost.com about the flap over “Family Guy,” says Sarah Palin misrepresented the show’s meaning in an effort to “attack the left in any form.” Far from being a slight on people with disabilities, Davis said, the episode “serves to show us that we can’t and shouldn’t underestimate people with Down syndrome.” An excerpt:

Tellingly, she didn’t mind Rush Limbaugh use the R-word, saying is was just “satire.” Satire? What is Family Guy? Greek tragedy?

The moral of this story isn’t that Family Guy is an insensitive show; it’s that Palin is using Trig as a hostage to shield her from the shoot-out of the last election. With Trig in tow she’s not the incompetent former governor of Alaska or the incendiary anti-wonk, she is simply the good Mom protecting her child and all people with disabilities.

If Palin really cared about people with disabilities, she would be supporting health care legislation and stronger enforcement of the Americans with Disabilities Act. But then that would be more of that “hopey changey” stuff she ridicules.

Lennard Davis is professor of English, disability studies, and medical education at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

(Photo from www.lennarddavis.com)

Writing on CNN.com, San Diego Union editorial board member Ruben Navarrette Jr. says the ‘Family Guy’ dig at Sarah Palin was just about as funny as “showing President Clinton, one of their icons, having a heart attack.” It’s not funny, he said, because Trig Palin “already has a hard life in store — filled with intolerance, prejudice and limitations imposed by others.”

An excerpt:

Wanna take Palin down a peg? Fine. But don’t use her child to do it — especially this child.

Mia Navarro, writing at Politicsdaily.com, salutes actress Andrea Fay Friedman for responding to Sarah Palin’s attack on Fox’s “Family Guy.” Friedman voiced the character of Ellen, a teenager who has Down syndrome (as Friedman does herself.) An excerpt:

The thing is, in the broader context, Ellen represents a tremendous step forward in Hollywood. For too long, the public image of people with disabilities in this country has hinged on the heroic or the tragic … Members of the disabled population don’t want to be defined by their disability, just like so many other minorities don’t want to be defined only by, say, race or sexual orientation.

… Friedman told the Times she was raised by her parents “to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life.”

“I was doing my role,” she insisted. “I’m an actor.”

I think it’s safe to say she’s a role model too.

Earlier posts here.