Uncle Jerry puts his foot in his mouth (again)

[thatcrazycajun]

Jerry Lewis Apologizes for Anti-Gay Remark

This is deeply irritating to me, more than most, as I believe wholeheartedly (a) in the cause Mr. Lewis works so hard for of helping people with incurable disease and (b) in equality under the law for LGBT folk, and (c) because I know for a fact that the man does not truly harbor anti-gay prejudice, from having watched him over many, many years. This is one of the things that makes it hard for me to persuade people to give every Labor Day (see post from Monday 9/3/07).

He's like an old uncle you can't just cut off because he's given you help when you dreadfully needed it, but then keeps dropping his pants at the family reunion every year because he thinks it's funny. Jerry's genuine decency wars with the times in which he grew up; the same way mine does, as I find the racism my family and regional culture were soaked in boiling to the surface in me when I become angry or impatient.

There are those who categorically refuse to ever provide any financial, moral or other support to MDA so long as Lewis remains its public face, and I can understand this position even if I don't like or agree with it. These people justifiably seek to make both him and the organization realize that such remarks and behavior are absolutely unacceptable in this day and age -- indeed, never have been tolerable from people of supposed intellect and decency.

However, the people caught in between—the persons infected with one of the 40 neuromuscular diseases covered by MDA programs—suffer needlessly, in being denied funding for vitally needed research, patient care and services, when we refuse to give out of disgust with their spokesman; and that, by my lights, is equally unacceptable. However noble and worth waging any political struggle may be, allowing collateral damage to innocent bystanders in the process is emphatically NOT an option.

Again, I implore any who are understandably disturbed by this news not to let the importance of the message be subverted to the intemperance of the messenger, or the fashion in which the message is presented. The people he's trying to help need that help (and in the main, want it) far too badly to let that happen.

Comments

PCness amok

[(Anonymous)]

Mr Lewis is eighty-one and raised in a different era. His explanation of having been speaking to people in a situation which felt like family, and the obviously innocent way he meant to use the word, along with the very quick (nearly instantaneous)realization that he might have offended people who react only to words and not their context, tell me that he is innocent of wrongdoing. The level of political correctness that would allow those with an agenda to vilify him is reprehensible, and those who demanded an apology for an offense where no offense was meant, are the ones who should be apologizing.

So what if he keeps dropping his pants at the family reunion. Some of the family still get a laugh out of it, all the while acting embarrassed and denouncing the mortification of it all. Others are truly embarrassed but don't denounce him because he deserves an extraordinary amount of respect for what he has done for nearly everybody there at one time or another. The rest ought to just grow up, get some empathy and perhaps some dignity, and just get over it.

Every faux pas by a celebrity does not require a media circus, whether you are truly (albeit as slightly as in this case)aggrieved, or just throwing a tantrum so mommy will give you a lollipop (as in so many other PC moments).

Anyone who thinks that help for small, sick children should be withheld because they don't like the person who has worked to garner that help for them for close to fifty years, is contemptible and a far worse person and far smaller person than the one who let a wrong word slip while trying to make people laugh.

Re: PCness amok

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