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Jerry Lewis

Jerry's Giant Checks vs. Disability Reality Checks:
The Labor Day Telethon
Author: Rev. Rus Cooper-Dowda
uudre@aol.com

Article: The first weekend in September giant checks will stalk the land again, as they do every year. No, it won't be some sort of "War of the Worlds" coming. Yes, it will be the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA) telethon hosted by Jerry Lewis. Again. He will talk, weep, moan and sing about "Jerry's Kids." Companies, large and small, will give him giant bank checks on the air. But another newer tradition will also be taking place in front of many telethon sites around the country. These are becoming an ever bigger reality check on the MDA's "beg to pay" ritual.

I am referring to the annual protests against Mr. Lewis' "Pity-thon" by "Jerry's Orphans," many of whom are former MDA poster children. These adults, parents and children are a gutsy group. Some have disabilities. Some do not. All seek a more respectful, fuller life for the disabled community. That's the entire mission of the group. Right there. Mr. Lewis' years of pity-pitching has made that goal harder, not easier, to achieve.

***
Here is evidence of that from my Telethon file over the years:

"Dystrophic illness...this curse that attacks children of all ages."
-Jerry Lewis

"Telethons treat people with disabilities without dignity, showing us poster children who wind up dependent on help from adults and having no future."
-Ed Roberts, late activist with a disability

"Lord knows nothing's less dignified than sitting in a wheelchair." and "...sitting in a steel prison...."
-Jerry Lewis

"My wheelchair isn't an imprisonment -- it's a tremendous vehicle of liberation."
-Carol Gill, activist with a disability

On thinking about using a wheelchair: "I realize my life is half, so I must learn to do things halfway. I may be a full human being in my heart and soul. Yet I am still half a person."
-Jerry Lewis

"People with disabilities are portrayed as helpless and hopeless objects of charity in order to pull the public's guilt strings. Adults with disabilities commonly lead normal lives and want to be productive members of society..."
-Marilyn Golden, activist with a disability

"My kids cannot go in the workplace. There's nothing they can do."
-Jerry Lewis

"It was news to me that people with MD have nothing to offer in the workplace. I certainly hope no employers heard that. I guess, too, that this full-time job I have been doing for 12 years is a mirage."
-Mike Ervin, activist with a disability

"If you found out you had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, you might as well put a gun in your mouth."
-Jerry Lewis

"The disability rights movement and the telethon pity parade are on a head-on collision course."
-Marta Russell, activist with a disability

"...Pity. You don't want to be pitied because you're a cripple in a wheelchair, stay in your house."
-Jerry Lewis "

The image is really counterproductive. If you work, that's the stereotype you have to fight, that's ingrained in every employer's mind: poor little pathetic child."
-Maria Caudill, activist with a disability

"If it's pity, we'll get some money. I'm just giving you facts."
-Jerry Lewis "

...We are way beyond pity..." -Alana Theriault, activist with a disability

***
People with disabilities know that prejudice and hurtful old thinking cannot be legislated away. But, there are many positive ways to respond to the MDA's negative imagery.

Don't watch the telethon. Tell your local station ahead of time why you won't. Give directly to the MDA and not during telethon time. Tell them why you are choosing to do that. Also tell the MDA that Jerry Lewis has got to go. He has had years to change the message and has chosen not to do so. Their mailing address and phone number are at their website. (http://www.mdausa.org)

Look up the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Canada (MDAC) and see how fundraising can be successfully done without pity.

Check out the Muscular Dystrophy Family Foundation (MDFF). It was founded by people with MD and their families. They provide the same kinds of services as the MDA. Their pitch is based on empowerment. (http://www.mdff.org) Their spokepeople are rock musicians who have had MD since childhood.

Compare Lewis' MDA pity pitch to that of Easter Seals with their focus on discrimination and architectural barriers; United Cerebral Palsy with their emphasis on careers, education and family; and the United Negro College Fund with its focus on the wrongness of wasted human resources. Tell other people about your conclusions.

Do your own pitching. Pitch in wherever you can to help enforce existing disability access law and to lower the disabled community's 90% unemployment rate.

***
It isn't:
"Jerry's Kids" vs. "Jerry's Orphan's" here.

It is:
pity vs. accessible employment,
pity vs. accessible public transportation,
pity vs. accessible public services, and
pity vs. accessible and full community involvement.

In a television interview once, I said (while my kid squirmed in my lap), "The worst day of the year to be a person with a disability is during the Jerry Lewis telethon. I am a mother, a wife, a daughter, a sister, an employee...I am not one of Jerry's juveniles."

The author Charles Pellegrino wrote in GHOSTS OF THE TITANIC that "We must never follow people into anything we believe may lead to evil." New choices are called for because the prejudice Mr. Lewis stokes leads to such badness. The method the MDA uses to earn those giant checks costs way too much for the people they are meant to help. Time for Jerry to be bounced for Insufficient Respect.

Mercy Killings

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