Showing posts with label mental retardation. Show all posts
Showing posts with label mental retardation. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 16, 2012

King of all he surveys


Michael Holton is a popular guy. So it's no surprise that he's homecoming king at his Georgia high school.

Not only that, but by all accounts, Mikey has been both a blessing and an inspiration to his classmates, and you'd be hard-pressed to find a single one of them with a bad word to say about their new king. He did win with 97 percent of the vote, after all.

Michael Holton has Down syndrome. That he became homecoming king, has earned scores of friends and been an inspiration and a blessing to modern-day American -- teens desperate for both inspiration and blessing -- is because his mom, Amy, was among the 8 percent of women who don't abort their unborn child after receiving a prenatal Down syndrome diagnosis.

Think about that for a minute.

Wednesday, September 05, 2012

Freak-lovers flout convention, burden airlines


If Joan and Robert Vanderhorst had just gotten with the program 16 years ago, two U.S. airlines would have avoided a lot of bother.

Particularly in the age of terrorism, the last thing pilots, flight crews and air travelers need to deal with are unusual-looking youth with low IQs who, frankly, could be duped into carrying backpack nukes onto domestic U.S. flights in a Tehran second. That is what American Airlines was faced with Sunday at the Newark, N.J., airport, forcing the pilot and airline into quick action to ban a 16-year-old boy with Down syndrome from a flight to California and possibly avert a repeat of the Sept. 11 attacks of 2001.

Or at least spare the crew and passengers from having to stare and point for hours on end at an exotic-looking male with a low IQ who, heaven forfend, would want to act all weird . . . and interact with the normal people.

This is what American Airlines bravely nipped in the bud with its bold and decisive action, action made necessary by the selfish refusal of the Vanderhorsts more than a decade and a half ago to abort the abnormal problem child and spare the world a possible terror threat at worst and certain discomfort at best.

Some 92 percent of women have abortions after a Down syndrome diagnosis, so one has to wonder what Joan Vanderhorst's problem was.

Religious freakery? Antisocial tendencies?

What, is she nuts? It would seem she'd have to be to inflict such misery on herself and everyone else.


A SOCIETY must have standards, lest mayhem rule. If we start letting the retarded live -- not to mention fly -- it won't be long before the country is overrun by huggers, smilers, wavers and Special Olympics competitors . . . to disastrous effect.

But according to the New York Daily News, it's mayhem we have, and American and United airlines are on the front lines:
Joan and Robert Vanderhorst, of Bakersfield, Calif., said they intend to sue American over the "humiliating" incident at Newark Airport, in which they were told their special needs son posed a "flight risk."

"It's defamation," Robert Vanderhorst told the Daily News. "It's a violation of his civil rights and its defamation."

Joan Vanderhorst pulled out her cell phone and started recording the incident on Sunday in which Bede is seen quietly playing with his hat and an American Airlines official warns that she was prohibited from filming "in a security-controlled area."

At one point, Port Authority police were even called on the confused family.

"Nothing like this has ever happened to us before. That's what's so shocking. He's usually our good luck charm. Good things usually happen when Bede is with us," Vanderhorst said.

Bede and his parents had been in Jackson, N.J., visiting family and were eager to make the long return flight home. On a "lark" they had even upgraded their seats to first class, shelling out an extra $625 dollars.

"My wife said, 'oh Bede's never flown first class,' he'll be so excited."
Vanderhorst said Bede, a freshman in high school, has flown "at least 30 times" through his life and has never caused any trouble.

Nothing was different before Sunday's flight, he said. Bede was sticking close to his parents and was not acting unruly, nor was he upset.

But as the family waited to board, an American Airlines official pulled them aside and said the pilot had observed Bede and didn't feel safe allowing him on the plane.

Joan Vanderhorst quickly snapped on her video camera and can be heard sobbing. "We are being singled out," she said. Robert Vanderhorst, an attorney, calmly pleads with the airline official. "He's behaving. He's demonstrating he's not a problem."

The agitated American Airlines employee instead called Port Authority police to escort the family away from the gate.


(snip)

Vanderhorst said he has spoken with his attorneys about a lawsuit, accusing the airline of violating Bede's civil rights and the Americans With Disabilities Act.

"My son cannot defend himself," he said. "I expect that American Airlines will not give their pilots the ability to discriminate against anyone; gay, black disabled," he said.

The family's trip home deteriorated even further when they were loaded into a full United Airlines flight and placed in the very back row.

"For a second time, we were discriminated against. Segregated."
LinkSO? That's what you get when you don't take care of your problems when they're small.

They eventually let Rosa Parks sit in the front of the bus, and now look at America's inner cities. They're trouble with a capital "T," which rhymes with "B," which stands for "Bad." And "Black." Am I right? Am I right?

What the Vanderhorsts need to learn is that 92 percent of retarded-baby-bearing women can't be wrong. Just like 92 percent of white Southerners had it right back in the day and 92 percent of National Socialists in Germany before that!

Right?

Right?

Habe ich Reich . . . er, recht?

Sunday, February 07, 2010

Trig Palin: Political football


Sarah Palin not only isn't fit to be president, I'm starting to have second thoughts about whether she's fit to be Trig's mom.

The mother of a Down Syndrome child thinks Rahm Emanuel, President Obama's chief of staff, isn't fit to hold the job because -- in a fit of pique -- he called Obama's critics on the left "f***ing retarded."

IN FACT, Palin was in high dudgeon over the whole thing:

PALIN: Special-needs parents reached out to me and obviously they know me well enough to know that I am sincere in my efforts to make this world a more welcoming place for those with special needs. I made that commitment during the GOP convention speech. They knew that they could come to me and ask and I was happy to do it, I'd do it again in a heartbeat and I'm not politically correct, I am not a word police person but there are some things, especially coming from the most powerful office in the world, in the free world, the chief of staff in that office being so demeaning and degrading to those with special needs. And remember too it's not as benign as the White House wants to spin this into. He didn't just use the r-word applying it to a plan, he called opponents of a plan f'ing retards. That's demeaning, degrading, it's beneath the dignity of the White House. That alone should I think make the president ask for that do-over with his chief of staff.

Q: Obama made a Special Olympics crack about a year ago.

PALIN: Yeah he did, and so that pattern there --

Q: Did you say anything then?

PALIN: I sure did, I did. I was the governor then and I made a statement saying you know, insensitive, come on, coming from the most powerful man in the free world, you should do better than that, Mr. President. Yeah I made a statement about that and was criticized for that too, but I don't care -- I ‘m not gonna sit down and shut up. I'm gonna tell people that this pattern of not just the insensitivity, but the flippant way of perhaps looking at those who are less fortunate and are not part of that elite crowd there in Washington I'm sick of it and I'm gonna stand up and I'm gonna say something about it because I think I'm speaking on behalf of others who are concerned about it.

ON THE OTHER HAND, she also thinks conservative talk-show emperor Rush Limbaugh was doin' just fine when, after full reflection and deliberation, he said this:

I think the big news is the crackup going on. Our politically correct society is acting like some giant insult has taken place by calling a bunch of people who are retards, retards.

I mean, these liberal activists are kooks. They are loony tunes. And I'm not going to apologize for it, I'm just quoting Emanuel. It's in the news. I think the news is that he's out there calling Obama's number one supporters effing retards. So now there's going to be a meeting. There's going to be a retard summit at the White House, much like the beer summit between Obama and Gates and that cop in Cambridge.

IT'S NICE TO KNOW up front when a politician is so craven that she'll sell out her own child's honor to avoid offending someone she thinks it's important she not offend.

Trig is her child; he suffers from a condition marked by mental retardation -- now more commonly referred to as "developmental disability." But in the warped moral universe of Sarah Palin, using "retarded" as an insult is a bad thing only for Democrats.

Prominent Republicans -- well, at least the ones she thinks are of use to her -- can use the term, as well as the even nastier "retard," and it magically becomes brilliant satire.

Someone here is retarded, and it's not liberal Democrats, cynical radio talkers or even baby Trig. The only "retard" in all this -- a profound moral "retard" -- would be the woman who just might want to be president.

God help us.