Heroes, disabled

S * P * O * I * L * E * R * S

Hey, I’m going to talk about the show. I will reveal things that happened. If you haven’t watched it, but plan to, and just hate having the plot revealed, Go back! Go back! Captain Kirk, go baaaaaaaaaaaaaaack.

Last Warning!

I got caught up on my favorite TV show, Heroes, yesterday. The Eclipse, Part I is something of a study on disabilty attitudes. Everyone lost their powers and suddenly became disabled, merely normal after they had gotten used to being supernormal. Each character reacted differently to their loss, with their reactions in keeping with their personality and values.

To some of the characters, the loss of powers is a relief, even though it brings them great pain. For the super-healer, Clair, the pain is what she cherishes most, since she had lost the ability to feel it. Even though she is shot in a botched kidnapping attempt, and can’t immediately heal like she usually would, she is happy that she now has confirmation that she is human after all. Series all-purpose bad guy Sylar is also content with his loss of ability, focussing on his release from the constant hunger and discontent his super-comprehension had put him through. In comparison to what he was, he now has a cognitive disability, and he couldn’t be more pleased. And Mohinder, who had mutated himself in the service of mad science, is thrilled to no longer be turning into an insect…at least until the heavies come around and threaten to beat him to a pulp.

Some of the characters are irritated with their loss and resistant to adapting. Nathan Petrelli, at the beginning of the episode, was chiding his younger brother, Peter, who had lost powers to their father earlier in the season, for being resentful over his relatively disabled state. Then he also loses his powers and begins lashing out at Peter for suggesting that they take his inability to fly into account in their travel plans, and his stubborness leads them both to a deadend. Psychic Matt Parkman, who had nearly given up on finding happiness when his superpower first began to manifest, again nearly gives up on finding happiness–this time with the excuse that he can’t do anything to win his intended without his ability.

The most pathetic character, though, is the one whose loss of super-speed renders her disabled by TAB standards. Daphne is ridiculous. Tim Kring, why did you pull out the self-pitying disabled person stereotype? All this time, we were led to believe that Daphne was in thrall to the evil Papa Petrelli because of some super terrible feature of her pre-super life. And now we find out that the terrible thing is that she has leg braces and forearm crutches? And to avoid having her powers stripped by Papa Petrelli was willing to betray everyone she loved and act contrary to her own moral code? What kind of a person would rather be someone else’s puppet than be unable to walk? This is a completely unbelievable personality flaw, and a libel against people with disabilities. If you had other characters who were traditionally disabled without their powers, then it would be OK to show one of them as being a self-hating cripple. But you don’t. You are using one character to stand in for an entire class of people. You may as well kill off the black cast members on a regular basis. Oh, wait. You do that, don’t you. Maybe you all need to think a little harder about your positions of privilege?   

The one character that I think best reflects the disability reality is Hiro. He refused to allow Parkman to feel sorry for himself, insisting that a real hero wouldn’t need special powers but would find a way to save the day. He is confident that everything will be fine, that they must simply have a plan. Yes, right now, he has the mind of a child and is looking to get his own power back. But it is his basic personality that is leading him, and that views regaining both his adult mind and powers as simply a means to an end. And if he can’t be a hero with his abilities restored, he will still be a hero. He’s already saved Parkman’s romance.

(Hiro is actually reminding me a bit of my mom right now. She has messed her leg up but good. Again. Maybe permanently this time. And she is irritated about not being able to do what she usually does, but chalks up her inconvenience to not having what she needs for the circumstances: a wheelchair, someone to walk her dog, handrails. She has a plan. She’s going to get those things, and everything will be fine.)

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Via Andrea’s Buzzing About:

So-So Security

Morgan Dawn tells us about an article attacking Social Security Disability claimants. The article is a blatant “lucky duck” argument striving to refocus outrage from the greedy to the needy. Author Melanie Scarborough displays an astounding viciousness regarding the social consequences of disability. She apparently thinks that people with mental illness or autism are just milking the system, to judge from her assessment:

The guidelines say “social functioning’ includes the ability to get along with others, such as family members, friends, neighbors, grocery clerks, landlords or bus drivers.

“You may demonstrate impaired social functioning by, for example, a history of altercations, evictions, firings, fear of strangers, avoidance of interpersonal relationships or social isolation.”

Why should anyone collect a check from taxpayers just for being a jerk?

In determining mental disabilities, examiners also consider the applicant’s “concentration, persistence or pace.” So work slowly and give up easily, and you might be rewarded with a monthly check.

Scarborough also shows that she has no idea whatsoever how disability for the sake of SSDI is determined. She complains that the list of conditions for which one may receive disability is so “exhaustive that almost everyone has some condition by which they could claim to be disabled.” I’ll be glad to introduce her to the widow of a man who died from complications of EDS. During the final years of his life, unable to work or even to sit up on his own, he was repeatedly denied benefits until his lawyer managed to bring him in, on a gurney, before the judge who finally realized he was looking at a dying man. The first check came after his death. If that list is so darn exhaustive, how does it miss chronic joint dislocation and organ failure as symptoms that indicate a person can not work for a living?

Insisting that few people have disabilities, she then cloaks her distrust of people with disabilities with a false concern for those with “genuine disabilities” such as MS and Down’s Syndrome. Everyone else, she believes, are “chiselers.” And a much worse problem than CEOs draining the life blood out of corporations despite their incompetence on the job. Lets see, the people I know getting SSDI get in the neighborhood of $700 a month. That means that, in 10 years time, they have received about $84,000. That’s penny ante stuff for any real cheats. Just ask former Home Depot CEO Robert Nardelli.

"Designer Disabilities"

ABC News is jumping on the dogpile against people with disabilities having children with their same disability.

Way to misrepresent an issue, ABC News. These potential parents aren’t “giving” a child a disability, they are choosing to include embryos with certain genetic expression amongst those that are implanted, or they are choosing not to abort when they discover that their fetus carries the same traits they have. Dwarfs, especially, are encouraged to undergo genetic testing to make sure the fetus is viable. When they find out that a fetus is viable, but also has dwarfism, what do you expect them to do? Cry? Abort? Why can’t they be happy about it, even happier than if they were told they would have an average sized baby?

Those people who are so incensed at the idea of “designer disabilities” that they immediately assume the worst and don’t bother to read the entire article need to read the article, and read it carefully to see what is really going on, not what the editorializing says is going on. People should know better than to accept what the MSM says. Mainstream media plays to prejudice and fear, and delights in creating scapegoats. Don’t fall for their lies.

This is so much the return of eugenics. First, the guardians of ethnic hygiene aim for the obvious targets: the Deaf, dwarfs, people with mental illness. Then they will go after populations with greater distributions of targeted genetic traits. Remember that Buck v. Bell has never been overturned, so it definitely can happen here. After all, it has here before.