{"id":197,"date":"2003-09-01T21:04:29","date_gmt":"2003-09-01T21:04:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=197"},"modified":"2003-09-01T21:04:29","modified_gmt":"2003-09-01T21:04:29","slug":"operators_are_s","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Operators Are Standing By"},"content":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning feeling feverish and a little nauseous. I don’t think think m coming down with anything, but I kind of wasted the whole day away because I didn’t feel like doing much, not even write. Feeling better now and I should be back at work tomorrow.
\nSomeone e-mailed me and asked me what I thought of the MDA Telethon, which just ended a few hours ago. To be honest, I try not to give it much thought. Believe it or not, I was dragged out on display for a couple telethons back when I was a kid. I remember being kissed on the cheek by a cute local news personality and thinking that I was the shit. But by the time I was a teenager I realized how exploitative Jerry Lewis and the MDA really is. Every year they bring out some cute kid who is nothing more than a tool used to play on Joe and Jane Schmoe’s pity for the poor crippled children. Even the local newspaper gets invited to the pity party; just look at this article that appeared in today’s Minneapolis paper<\/a>. I understand that pity is a natural reaction upon seeing someone with a disability, but it is a reaction borne out of ignorance and a reluctance to understand what a person with a disability really experiences on a daily basis. I don’t need pity. Mr. Lewis has said that if people like me don’t want pity, we should stay home<\/a>. The idiocy of this statement just reflects the arrogance and condescension inherent in the whole telethon culture. And I’m suspicious about where all that money goes. Private charities have their place, but I’d prefer that everyone pay fifty more dollars in taxes a year to ensure that everyone with a disability has access to the services they need without feeling compelled to kiss the ass of some has-been actor with a Messiah complex.
\nAren’t you glad you asked?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I woke up this morning feeling feverish and a little nauseous. I don’t think think m coming down with anything, but I kind of wasted the whole day away because I didn’t feel like doing much, not even write. Feeling better now and I should be back at work tomorrow. Someone e-mailed me and asked […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","category-1-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9Iwau-3b","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/the19thfloor.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}