PhilosopherCrip

Not satisfied with handing out Best Picture Awards to deceptive and small minded films like Million Dollar Baby, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences intends to give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009.

Many people with Muscular Dystrophy and other disabilities strongly object to the way Lewis uses dramatic images of helplessness and pity to beg for money. There is an entire organization called “Jerry’s Orphans” that is made up of former Telethon poster kids who have grown into adults that understand how pity obscures and thwarts demands for justice, respect, and civil rights.

How many of us cringe when someone feels “terrible” that we are LPs/deaf/chair users/learning disabled/autistic/etc? That cringe is what this petition is giving voice to. The Academy Awards plan to present Lewis with their Humanitarian Award for his work with the telethon. The petition describes in more detail why this is problematic and was written by one of Jerry’s Orphans, Laura Hershey. I can say for sure that everything in it is factually accurate. I know the author personally and have researched all of the cases she describes in the petition (I am thinking about writing a dissertation about how pity harms folks with disabilities, so Mr. Lewis provides me with a lot of material).

Jerry Lewis, looking dismayed and surprised...

Anyway the petition against presenting Lewis with the award can be found at: http://www.petitiononline.com/jlno2009/petition.html

The full text of the petition is:

To:  The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences

This petition has been launched to object to the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ announcement that it will give Jerry Lewis its Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the Oscar Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009.

During his decades of hosting the Labor Day Telethon, Jerry Lewis has helped to perpetuate negative, stereotypical attitudes toward people with muscular dystrophy and other disabilities. Jerry Lewis and the Telethon actively promote pity as a fundraising strategy. Disabled people want RESPECT and RIGHTS, not pity and charity.

In 1990, Lewis wrote that if he had muscular dystrophy and had to use a wheelchair, he would “just have to learn to try to be good at being a half a person.” During the 1992 Telethon, he said that people with MD, whom he always insists on calling “my kids,” “cannot go into the workplace. There’s nothing they can do.” Comments like these have led disability activists and our allies to protest against Jerry Lewis. We’ve argued that he uses the Telethon to promote pity, a counterproductive emotion which undermines our social equality. Here’s how Lewis responded to the Telethon protesters during a 2001 television interview: “Pity? You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”

Jerry Lewis has also made derogatory comments about women and gay men. His outdated attitudes and crude remarks are dehumanizing, not humanitarian.

Therefore, we the undersigned support the actions and arguments of the coalition group The Trouble with Jerry. We protest the Academy’s characterization of Jerry Lewis as a “humanitarian.” And we ask that the Academy cancel its plans to give Lewis the Hersholt Humanitarian Award.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned