Bauer Reports: Jerry Lewis Receiving Humanitarian Award
at '09 Oscars for MDA Telethon
Patricia E. Bauer’s excellent disability news blog reported today on the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Scientists plan to grant its major Humanitarian Award to comedian Jerry Lewis this Sunday during the annual Academy Awards (the Oscars) broadcast for his work with the Muscular Dystrophy Assocation Telethon. The “Trouble with Jerry” group, a collation including 33 disability rights and advocacy groups will protest Lewis’s award this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday in advance of the Oscars.
Lewis's MDA Telethon has received heavy criticism from a variety of disability groups for its negative portrayals of people with disabilities. As the Trouble with Jerry website notes, "'Lewis has described disabled individual is 'half a person' and referred to a wheelchair as ' steel imprisonment.' For more than two decades, disability rights advocates have objected to Lewis’ portrayal of life with a disability as tragic and pathetic. In response, Lewis snarled, “You don’t want to be pitied because you’re a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house!”
RELATED:
The Big Picture- Patrick Goldstein on the collision of entertainment, media and pop culture: Jerry Lewis on live TV: Julius Kelp or Buddy Love?http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/the_big_picture/2009/02/oscars-scariest.html
