Content Note: Child Murder. I wrote a piece for CNN about the murder of children with disabilities. I wrote it because of the media discourse I saw surrounding the death of London McCabe. I wrote it because that framing was not unusual when this kind of murder happens. I wrote it to provide a…
It’s been quite a week. On Thursday, I woke up and could find neither clip nor transcript of Daniel Handler’s racist joke at the National Book Awards. So I made one and offered a few comments. I said: For a powerful white author to make a watermelon joke when handing out an award to a…
When someone brings up thoughts of suicide to you, you have already done something right. This is a repost with permission. Amy McNally is a musician in Madison and a friend. Please share this. There is someone in your social circle who needs to read this. Originally posted by sweetmusic_27 at International Survivors of Suicide…
This is a guest post written by Ellen Arnold, PhD, Assistant Professor of History at Ohio Wesleyan University. “Perhaps the biggest thing missing from comparisons between Ebola and the bubonic plague, or in fact between any of these large scale tales of epidemic and pandemic disaster, is the human scale.” I am an environmental…
A few months ago I wrote a CNN piece about the use of disclaimers as a way to get around offensive humor. My piece and subsequent blog was specifically on the context of Down syndrome jokes and disability humor. I believed, though, that there’s a broader language issue here. We say something terrible, we bracket…
Today, sometime from 10-12 (I assume the second hour), the Chairman of the NEH is going to be on air with Diane Rehm. You can listen here. You can call in. The Chairman does not talk to me, nor do I expect him to. I’m a nobody. The Director of Communications at the NEH does…
On CNN – in “London McCabe’s Death Matters” – I argued that the way we talk about autism, our ideas about the condition, our ideas about disability more generally, shape the worldview that can lead to child murder. The correlation in these cases is not lack of services or money, but ideas about disability. Correlation…
I have a new piece up at Reproductive Health Reality Check. It continues to explore the themes of how we generate a new rhetoric for people who are pro-choice, pro-information, and anti-eugenics. It takes as its lede a story about a woman who wishes she had aborted her child with Down syndrome, born these 47…
So here’s the pattern. The family of a person with psychiatric disability decides that they need help. The disabled person isn’t taking their medicine. They are perhaps seeming violent or might become violent. The family calls the police to ask for help getting the person to the hospital. Police arrive. The person with the disability…
I missed last Sunday’s roundup as I was frantically finishing my proofs. Soon (February), you will be able to buy my book! Please buy my book (or at least recommend it to your university libraries). You can’t buy it yet, though. Child Murder I had two published essays last week and associated blog posts. The…