From the Toronto Star:

Canadian athletes shattered records at the 2010 Paralympic Winter Games, bringing home 19 medals, ten of them gold. The unrivalled hero of the games was Canadian alpine skier Lauren Woolstencroft, whose five gold medals set a new record for female athletes in the Winter Paralympics.

Canadian athletes said they were helped by increased public funding, which gave them access to the same coaching, equipment and sports medicine as their Olympic counterparts. An excerpt:

… these Games, which opened on March 12 at a sold-out B.C. Place with the theme “One Inspires Many,” were never just about medals and records.

They were about inclusion and acceptance of athletes – and all people – with disabilities.

… While the high profile of Paralympians is sure to fade with the end of the Games, it’s hoped that their legacy is a new awareness – among both the able-bodied and people with disabilities – that there’s no such thing as a barrier to being physically fit.

Canada’s Olympic Broadcast Media Consortium estimated that television viewership was way up, with 13.6 million Canadians watching at least a portion of the coverage of the Games. But critics continued to complain that coverage had been inadequate, especially in comparison with the television coverage of the Olympics.

By Alan Sepinwall, [Newark] Star-Ledger

NBC’s new drama “Parenthood,” premiering Tuesday night, features a family whose son is diagnosed with Asperger’s syndrome. It’s among an increasing number of television shows that are trying to depict characters with the disorder, and is one of the first to acknowledge the diagnosis. An excerpt:

… the storyline – a personal one for one of the show’s creators – has the potential to be a breakthrough in how television depicts characters with a condition that’s increasing in prevalence, both nationwide and in New Jersey.

“I am always happy when I see characters on TV who are portrayed with Asperger’s, when it’s done correctly,” says Lori Shery, president and co-founder of ASPEN, a national Asperger support and education group based in Edison. “We need to change the cultural perception.”

See also:

Off-kilter characters: TV shows feature kids (and adults) with what looks like Asperger’s — Ellen Gray in the Philadelphia Daily News

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.

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.

“Family Guy” actress Andrea Fay Friedman is interviewed on ABC Good Morning America about her dustup with Sarah Palin.

“Sarah Palin didn’t even get the joke,” Friedman told ABC News.”It would be nice if she did have a sense of humor … Come on Sarah, laugh a little.”

The actress’s mother, Marjorie Friedman, says the “Family Guy” episode was inspirational to other people with Down syndrome because it portrayed them as “everyday teens.”

“She was feisty, she was aggressive, she was mean. It was a real acting job.”