YouTube and Disability Activism

Last Sunday, I was moved to post about Flickr and disability history; today, I'm watching another online forum for user-generated content. It's hard to get mainstream news cameras to point away from the red carpet on Oscar weekend; but it's not hard to put a video on YouTube, and quite a few videos from the Jerry Lewis protests are already up (as I type this, the Oscars haven't started yet). Here's a digest of the ones I can find.

DESCRIPTION: These involve long interviews with Sarah Watkins, Simi Linton, Laura Hershey, and others, articulating the points of the community's objections to a humanitarian award going to Lewis. The visuals involve a lot of bright fluorescent posterboards and crowds behind the interviewees.

Scratched Paint on a Lamborghini?

Apparently, in the eyes of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, decades of incessant, patronizing, condescending pity and outdated representations of people with disabilities are the equivalent of "some scratches in the paint job...of a Lamborghini." Go check out more of this delightful analogy at TheTroublewithJerry.org ... it's not too late to sign the petition or join the Oscar-weekend protests of this "humanitarian" award.

What I should be writing about....

...but I'm not, because my connection is so unpredictable--a blog entry with links would take hours to assemble, during most parts of the day. I'm going to try a quick one here, at night, when the connection seems to work better. I'd like to be covering...

• The petition against a humanitarian "Oscar" for Jerry Lewis (but Andrea Shettle's got it covered, and Shelley Tremain too)
• Accessibility (or lack thereof) at the Inauguration next week (Ruth Harrigan has a round-up)
• Peter Dinklage on last week's episode of 30 Rock (which was terrific--Beth Haller has the story, with a photo)
• Blogger Kristina Chew's departure from Autism Vox, and arrival at Change.org
• The book I'm reading, April Witch by Majgull Axelsson (a Swedish novel, title character is disabled, living in a longterm nursing facility, lots of first-person observations on independent living, hospital life, being the object of pity, disgust, disbelief, manipulation, etc.)
• The book I read before this one, Riven Rock by T. C. Boyle (historical novel based on the real lives of Stanley McCormick and Katharine Dexter McCormick; Stanley's bouts of "derangement" were managed by various treatments, and by isolation on an estate in Montecito, California, supported by his family's wealth and monitored by his wife Katharine for decades)
• New playground in my neighborhood that's almost kinda-sorta accessible (photo to follow), and adventures in commenting at a nearby town's planning council meeting, where the question was "accessible playground or roller hockey?" (They decided, not wanting to disappoint any of the commenters, to have both, against some daunting limitations of space, but at least it's still under discussion.)

GAH!!!!

This. Yeah, just two years after Clint Eastwood was awarded as a "humanitarian" at the Oscars, we're going to have Jerry Lewis get a "humanitarian" award too? While it would be nice to see the award quietly rescinded, or the presentation streamlined out of the over-long broadcast, it's most likely going to happen... Read the Anti-Telethon blogswarm from 2007 to see why that's protest-worthy. (At least Tropic Thunder probably isn't up for any awards this season.)

So, who's coming out to Hollywood in February? It's usually a beautiful sunny day. And the Walk of Fame is quite wheelchair-friendly.

January 14: Harold Russell (1914-2002)

Boy, you ought to see me open a bottle of beer.

--"Homer Parrish," as played by Harold Russell

Born on this date in 1914 in Nova Scotia, Harold Russell, pictured at right with the two Oscars he won in 1947 for a single role, in Best Years of Our Lives. Though he was Canadian-born and raised, he was living in the US and working as a meatcutter when Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941; he joined the Army the very next day. While making a training film in 1944, a defective fuse blew up and both hands had to be amputated. He used hooks thereafter, with a grace that, by all accounts, dispelled dubious onlookers' concerns.

Russell appeared in an Army documentary about rehabilitation, Diary of a Sergeant, while he was a student at Boston University. He was spotted by director William Wyler, and cast to play a disabled veteran in The Best Years of Our Lives. He won two Oscars for the role: one a "special" Oscar for "bringing hope and courage to his fellow veterans," and one for Best Supporting Actor, as voted by the Academy. After the hubbub surrounding his Oscar wins, Russell returned to Boston University and finished a degree in business.

Russell published an autobiography, Victory in my Hands (1949). For many years he was National Commander of the American Veterans (AMVETS), and chaired the President's Commission on the Employment of the Handicapped.

Symmetry is overrated...

Forest Whitaker took home the Oscar for Best Actor in a Leading Role last night, for his portrayal of Idi Amin in The Last King of Scotland. Whitaker is hardly a conventional-looking actor-director: a noticeable strabismus (turned-out eye) and ptosis (drooping eyelid) have made him recognizable in a wide range of roles, and he has said that he thinks his appearance gives his characters more depth. It could have been repaired in recent years; even now, there are commentators asking if it should be. Whitaker has said he'd consider the fairly routine surgery to improve his vision, but not for aesthetic reasons.

Humanitarian?

We (my family and I) went up to Hollywood to walk/roll with the Not Dead Yet forces at the 2005 Oscars. I really didn't anticipate an encore this year.

But Eastwood is getting the MPAA's first Jack Valenti Humanitarian Award at this year's festivities? Um....hmmm. In 2005, Ragged Edge assembled a page full of links about why he's no humanitarian on disability issues. Or, for the long version, get a copy of Mary Johnson's Make Them Go Away: Clint Eastwood, Christopher Reeve, and the Case against Disability Rights (Advocado Press, cover shown at left).

So,"decency and goodness of spirit," huh? Even aside from Million Dollar Baby and his ADA violations, this is still Dirty Harry, isn't it?