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)

Says VCU students twisted his meaning; VCU stands by its story

Recordings of Marshall’s remarks posted on the Web

From the Richmond Times-Dispatch, Washington Post, WTKR Norfolk, Virginia Commonwealth University, AP/[Newport News] Daily Press:

Virginia Del. Bob Marshall turned aside calls for his resignation Wednesday and attempted to distance himself from recorded remarks that have been construed as saying that a woman who has an abortion runs the risk of birth defects in later pregnancies as a punishment from God.

Addressing his colleagues in the Virginia General Assembly, Marshall called for a correction from journalism students at the Virginia Commonwealth University School of Mass Communications. Jeff South, an associate professor of journalism who oversees the school’s Capital News Service, said VCU stands by its report “as a fair and accurate account of the press conference that Del. Marshall held last Thursday.”

The school’s website and Marshall’s website both carried recordings and transcripts of Marshall’s remarks, delivered last week at a press conference organized against public funding for Planned Parenthood.

(more…)

‘Our leaders fail the neediest’

Columnist Rick Green, writing in the Hartford Courant, says Connecticut’s leaders have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on a legal fight to keep the Southbury Training School open, even though they know the facility violates federal discrimination law. “We will pay dearly for this,” he writes. A legal challenge to the sprawling institution for people with intellectual disabilities is being heard in federal court.

Green describes Southbury as a “1950s-era model for segregated care of the disabled,” and a “world that I thought existed only in film documentaries.” He says former Connecticut Gov. John Rowland caved to pressure from fearful families and staff fifteen years ago in a “transparent political move” that effectively halted efforts to move institutional residents back into the community and would “infect state policies for years to come.”

Experts say there is no reason why people with complex disabilities can’t live satisfying lives in the community with appropriate support, but families and guardians need to be educated about the possibilities to allay fears. Further, they say, community-based care comes at a lesser cost: approximately $122,000 per person per year, as compared with Southbury’s pricetag of $350,000 each for some 450 residents. An excerpt:

After more than a decade of waiting, we await a solution from a federal judge.

That’s what you get when nobody leads.

See also: School for intellectually disabled under pressure to change — Hartford Courant

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

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)

From NBC Washington and Gainesville [Va.] Times,  with audio from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU):

Virginia state delegate Bob Marshall told a gathering in Richmond last week that children with disabilities are a punishment from God to women who have aborted their first pregnancy. The remarks prompted a wave of criticism, and Marshall later said they had been taken out of context.

“The number of children who are born subsequent to a first abortion with handicaps has increased dramatically. Why? Because when you abort the first born of any, nature takes its vengeance on the subsequent children,” said Marshall, a Republican.

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

Marshall was addressing a press conference at the state capitol called by opponents of Planned Parenthood. They urged Virginia lawmakers to stop allocating funds to the organization because it provides abortions.