I carry no candle for Dick Cheney, just as I carry none for Abu Hamza and little, if any, for David Blunkett. No one could accuse this blog of Political Correctness.
But Blunkett was subjected to an entire television “comedy” in which the only joke was “blind man has sex”; the same people later gave us a John Prescott-themed “fat man has sex” barrel of laughs.
Hamza has been the object of endless ridicule of the “sling your hook” variety and worse.
And this week, Cheney, admittedly just injured rather than disabled, was widely compared to Dr Strangelove.
How and why is this sort of thing considered acceptable?
And this week, Cheney, admittedly just injured rather than disabled, was widely compared to Dr Strangelove.
ReplyDeleteHow and why is this sort of thing considered acceptable?
Because Dr Strangelove is a fictional character? And because there are strong and telling parallels between said fictional character and the popular image of Dick Cheney (as the warmongering evil genius behind a weak and ineffectual President), which the addition of a wheelchair only served to accentuate?
This has nothing whatever to do with disability, since the comedic value would be exactly the same if Dr Strangelove wore a particular type of suit or even used a certain phrase, and Dick Cheney inadvertently did the same thing.
As for Abu Hamza, it's hard to get too worked up about jibes about his disabilities when he himself deliberately bigged them up as "mujahideen war wounds" when the truth was rather less glamorous. In other words, the eyepatch and hook hands were part of his own self-constructed image - the exact equivalent of Jonathan Aitken's boasts about "the shining sword of truth", and just as worthy of ridicule.
I won't comment on the Blunkett programme because I didn't watch it and believe that this should be a prerequisite before passing judgement on a controversial broadcast. I know Blunkett himself rarely followed this principle, but there you go.
Funny how no one ever said a word of this until Cheney was in a wheelchair.
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