Jon22: The Website of Jonathan Dobres

I’m finding it difficult to reconcile the last two episodes of Glee—”Laryngitis” and “Dream On”—in regards to their treatment of the disabled.

Let’s take them in reverse chronological order, blog style. The B plot in “Dream On” revolves around Artie’s struggle to accept his disability. This is by no means an easy topic for television. TV shows tend to portray disability either as a weighty curse or as a complete non-issue. Neither interpretation is very truthful, and I’m impressed that Glee‘s writers are willing to ditch these simplistic tropes for something more challenging to the audience. It made me very uncomfortable to watch Artie triumphantly hoist himself onto crutches, only to face plant in front his girlfriend a moment later. It was heartbreaking to see him laying there on the floor, telling Tina to get out and leave him alone. It might have been uncomfortable and heartbreaking to see, but I’ve been there, and the moment rings true.

Then the episode goes a little farther. Artie gets excited about stem cell research and the inevitably of a cure for his condition, and imagines himself leading the entire mall in a startlingly catchy “Safety Dance”. The school’s guidance counselor eventually brings Artie back to down to Earth, pointing out that these treatments are at least a decade away from human trials, and it’s unhealthy for him to pin his hopes on the slim chance of a cure. Jayma Mays’ delivery in this scene is excellent, again, very true to life. But no matter how gently she handles the situation, Artie can’t help but feel trapped and inadequate. The episode closes with Tina and Mike dancing to “Dream A Little Dream On Me,” with Artie providing the vocals, trying to come to grips with the idea that he may never be as close to Tina as he truly wants.

It’s a complex ending, to say the least. Artie isn’t stuck with his face on the floor, but nor is he exactly thrilled with his life. The episode leaves him, and the audience, somewhere in between. It’s daring, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a TV show try to present disability with this kind of depth. This is one of the hard truths of living with a disability: you’re constantly walking a line between hope and pragmatism. It’s not healthy to let your disability keep you down and trap you in a box of limitations, but it’s equally unhealthy to pretend that there are no limits at all. For years—and I mean twenty years—I truly believed that my unusual walk was by and large totally unnoticeable. When I realized that it was, in fact, often the first thing that people noticed about me, well, that wasn’t such a good day. Or month, for that matter.

But that’s what it’s like. Some days you feel super confident, the equivalent of standing on two legs for the first time in years, and other days you’re laying there on the floor wishing everyone would just leave you the hell alone. Some in the disabled community (this guy, for instance) feel that it’s insulting to portray Artie as an insecure, pitiful victim, as aspiring to be able-bodied. I disagree. I’m perfectly comfortable with who I am, but I didn’t get there overnight, and I’d be lying if I said that I never imagine what it’d be like to move around without pronounced muscle spasticity dogging my every step. Like I said, some days are better than others. Teenagers are famously insecure about their bodies as a matter of course. Now try adding a wheelchair to that, and now tell me that it’s not okay to show Artie having a bad day. Glee did a great job on this one (Neil Patrick Harris’s stellar “Dream On” duet with Matthew Morrison and Joss Whedon’s skilled direction, particularly on the final Mike/Tina/Artie number, didn’t hurt either).

This makes “Laryngitis” all the more baffling, especially since it was written by the same trio who did “Dream On”. Don’t get me wrong, I felt that Kurt’s plot was well-handled, but the rest was a real mess. Drama queen Rachel comes down with laryngitis, which she immediately blows up into a catastrophe that will imperil her career and ruin her life. To set her straight, Finn introduces her to his friend, Sean, a former football player who, thanks to a bad day on the field, is now a quadriplegic. Sean’s lesson to Rachel is that you can lose the thing that most defines you and still go on. Or something. In other words, “You may have lost your voice, but things could be a lot worse, and even when really bad things happen, it’s not the end.”

Why did the writers feel the need to conjure a quadriplegic out of nowhere? Artie is right there, and it would’ve been nice to see he and Rachel have a substantive interaction for once. Instead, we get Sean, a character who we’ve never seen or heard of before. Hell, couldn’t you at least have had Artie introduce Rachel to Sean, instead of Finn?

It turns out that Zack Weinstein, who plays Sean, is a real-life quadriplegic. He was probably brought on board to answer some early criticism about the fact that Kevin McHale, who plays Artie, isn’t really disabled. Unfortunately, in trying to address one problem, the producers have only created a bigger one. Namely, that the disabled only exist as cautionary tales and object lessons for the able-bodied. “You think you have problems? Look what I deal with on a daily basis. Here but for the grace of God goes you.” It’s one of the worst (and most persistent) images of the disabled on television, and it blows my mind that the same team that writes Artie could make this mistake. Nice try guys, but Sean is still just a cipher who was brought into existence to teach one of our stars a lesson. Are you guys schizophrenic or something? Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Ian Brennan, I’m talking to you. I need more “Dream On” from you and a lot less “Laryngitis”.

Rand Paul would be a laughingstock if he didn’t have a decent chance of actually becoming a U.S. senator, but since he’s the Republican nominee for one of Kentucky’s senate seats, we must now live in fear of the very real possibility that he could be making laws in the near future.

I’m sure by now you’ve heard the gist of his disastrous NPR interview. Rand Paul hates racism but thinks that business owners should be allowed to discriminate against whomever they choose. Things only got worse for him on The Rachel Maddow Show. Paul has made similarly outrageous statements in the past, and at one point in the interview, Maddow decided to put him to the test. She noted that as recently as 2000, Bob Jones University, a private institution, had a ban on interracial dating. Would Rand Paul support Bob Jones University’s right to reinstate this overtly racist, exclusionary policy? The obvious answer, based on Paul’s own logic, is “Yes”. It was fun to watch him blink as he tried to reconcile his “libertarian” policy positions with the notion that they would leave him no choice but to support a blatantly racist policy. Ultimately he responded with, “I abhor discrimination in all its forms,” a delightfully insufficient, transparent non-answer.

Paul says that while he thinks it’s bad business to exclude any potential customer, businesses nevertheless should be granted the right to decide whom they serve. It’s not a totally insane statement, setting aside the obliviousness to the reality of implicit racism, the endorsement of entrenched discrimination, the willful disregard for historical context, and the misunderstanding of the entire purpose of the Civil Rights Act. Rand Paul just wants businesses to be able to select their own clientele, as many businesses already do.

What’s funny is that you don’t need someone like Rachel Maddow to take this line of reasoning to its absurd conclusion. Rand Paul has already done that for us, applying his unique mix of libertarian and Tea Party logic to the Americans with Disabilities Act. Paul thinks that the ADA, enacted in 1990 (Ted Kennedy, I miss you), is a perfect example of unnecessary governmental overreach. He believes that rather than telling businesses to spend money on expensive accommodations for the disabled, they can simply apply “common sense solutions” as they see fit. He’s repeatedly given the example of having a wheelchair-bound employee work in a first-floor office, rather than mandating the construction of an expensive elevator.

Of course, you had better hope that the first floor has bathrooms, and whoops, the conference rooms are all on the third floor, so maybe we can get you a teleconferencing system? In this case, Paul might argue that the business owner should probably install the elevator to accommodate the employee, except that the business owner will certainly argue that rather than bothering with a pricey elevator, the common sense solution is to simply not hire this person. That’s what makes Rand Paul’s objection to the Americans with Disabilities Act so reprehensible, even more so than his critique of the Civil Rights Act. A smart businessman wouldn’t exclude a racial minority at the expense of profits (I’m politely assuming that the majority of his clientele wouldn’t flee in the presence of a minority), but a smart businessman would exclude the disabled, since the costs of complying with the ADA generally outweigh the amount of business brought in by the small percentage of patrons who actually need those ramps, elevators, and parking spaces. Disability is expensive and inconvenient, and thanks to the Americans with Disabilities Act, you can no longer take the easy way out and ignore it. It very necessarily guarantees that the disabled will have equal access to their local businesses and communities, even if that means a short-term punch to the wallet.

That Rand Paul does not understand this is astounding. He is the most dangerous kind of idiot: an eye surgeon so myopic that he only sees the world from his white, able-bodied perspective.

One of my neighborhood’s biggest attractions is its Planned Parenthood, or at least that’s the impression you’d get from the small band of protestors who show up in front of it on a daily basis. They gather there every morning to hoist homemade signs, clutch rosaries, and accuse women and doctors of murder. Their goal is to shame women out of their right to choose, but in practice it’s not very effective. This is Boston, after all, and a few religious nuts aren’t going to make much of a dent in a city where a young man can marry his boyfriend and then sign that boyfriend onto his state-funded health insurance. I hear we have a Republican senator these days, but then, I’ve also heard that there’s some guy with a hook for a hand scaring teenagers at Makeout Point. It’s possible that they’re the same person, at least in theory.

The Planned Parenthood protestors are typically some combination of religious zealot, senior citizen, and mental patient; senior citizen being the most prominent category. It’s rare to see anyone under the age of 50 in protest gear.

Which is why he caught me off guard. He had no angry handmade sign, and he couldn’t have been older than thirty. I’m referring to the the red-haired guy who was standing outside of the Planned Parenthood as I was walking home from the gym a few weeks ago. As I passed by he tried to get my attention, and like all true Bostonians, I did my best to ignore him. Usually the iPhone earbuds help, even when they’re not actually playing music. But this guy was insistent, and he tried a little harder. It worked, he got my attention and my eye contact, and I really had no choice but to say, “Yes?” I really should have known better. The weirdest stuff happens to me when I’m walking home from the gym.

“Hello, sir. I was just wondering if I might be able to pray for you today.”

“Uh, no thank you. I’m good on prayer.”

“Are you sure? Not even for, you know, like,” and here he paused for just an instant, “physical healing?”

“No no, it’s not going to help, err…that is, I’m good, thanks.” And then I was on my way.

I was half a block away before I fully processed what he had said to me. Physical healing. My mouth hung open in astonishment. How dare you, you presumptuous little prick. If I need your help I will damn well ask for it, and any such request certainly won’t be for you to throw happy thoughts and pixie dust in my direction. Exactly who the hell do you think you are, you condescending, Bible-addled clownbag?

At this point I had stopped walking, and was strongly considering turning around and unloading all these thoughts and more on the guy. Ultimately I decided against it. Sure, the guy was a condescending, deluded idiot, but public brow beatings wouldn’t do any good here. If you’re crazy enough stand in front of a Planned Parenthood on a beautiful Wednesday afternoon and offer people prayer, then I strongly doubt any measure of sociological education will get through to you. At the very least, the guy had good intentions. Horribly misguided and insulting, yes, but there are worse people in the world. And besides, it was a beautiful day. Why ruin it with a fruitless argument?

Although between you and me, I hope the guy with the hook for a hand finds him.