Edge-centric

Maybe it's happening. Maybe the stuff Frank Bowe speculated would happen (read his Disability Meets The Boom article) is starting to happen.

UPI Health Correspondent Alex Cukan wrote an unusually hard-hitting column this week:

The fact that Clark recovered from a stroke, can communicate and go on network television should have been acclaimed as a stunning achievement -- because that's what it was. Being able to communicate was a big deal and Clark, knowing he wasn't perfect, was courageous to make the effort when he could have sat home eating popcorn....

"His stroke -- which cost him his timing, as well as his impeccable television elocution -- seemed especially sad," said the New York Times.

That's what it comes down to -- the disabled make some feel sad and uncomfortable. I suggest we get over it and start treating people, no matter how imperfect, with dignity and respect -- because 70 million baby boomers are only going to get older.

"It's ironic that some criticize Clark for slurred speech on a night that has been traditionally associated with an overindulgence of alcohol," she continued.

In 1976 I covered the campaign of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who spoke at a rally and was clearly drunk, and yet there was no murmuring in the crowd or no whispering that he might have had a few too many. Everyone in the crowd and the media seemed to ignore that he could hardly stand or walk without assistance. They treated him like the senator he became; in fact, no one seemed uncomfortable.

Isn't it interesting that people can ignore slurred speech and unsteady movement -- if they want to?

Unusually hard-hitting.

Maybe her tone was due to, as she said, her recent two columns on "Clay Aiken and his efforts to help remove the stigma of disabilities," as she put it (here and here).

Cukan's recent columns have been headlined "Caregiving." Go figure. Google News tells me Cukan's Dick Clark column appeared in at least 300 different places, including major newspapers.

Maybe baby boomers -- those folks who brought us all the Sixties activism -- are actually going to notice when they start being dissed. Maybe they are. Lookee here:

"Super Bowl Wants Only Young Dancers," read the headline in the Associated Press story I ran across yesterday. (Here it is with another headline in the Chicago Sun-Times.)

Mick Jagger and his bandmates may be nearing senior citizenship, but Super Bowl planners only want people 45 and younger to take the field during the Rolling Stones' halftime show....

The NFL says the reason for the age cutoff is that the job is physically challenging. Volunteers must enter and exit the field quickly and be on their feet for long periods. They will not have seats and will wait in a tunnel under Ford Field for most of the first half.

Sounds like age discrimination, for sure, putting that age limit in there like that -- and maybe it will turn out to be disability discrimination as well. The two will start overlapping more and more, I think.

Wonder if we'll be hearing more about this one?