Regular readers of Word of the Week will have seen me make this point before, but it bears repeating this week: There is no way to use the word or concept of “ableism” that is not itself ableist. Engaging in “ableism” is mentioning disability, and saying it is bad, which supposedly is what makes the lives of the disabled so hard. But it is a definitional part of the very nature of disability that it is preferable not to have one. “Ableism” is just a way of saying we must lie about disability or create a censorious norm against mentioning it. Lying and censorship are deeply antithetical to the ethos and purpose of journalism, though. For this reason, all the coverage about the supposed “ableism” in the discussion of disabled-by-a-stroke Pennsylvanian Senate candidate John Fetterman has separated journalists who uphold their own profession’s values from those who don’t.
Noting that pre-stroke Fetterman was better than post-stroke Fetterman at various cognitive tasks, including processing spoken words, is not ableist — it’s “fact-ist.” Nonetheless, according to a Buzzfeed News article about an interview Fetterman did with NBC’s Dasha Burns, “for advocates of people with permanent and temporary disabilities, the interview and the response leaned too much on Fetterman’s condition and whether he was up to the job.” A better editor would have rewritten the copy to express that these advocates are, apparently, simply advocates in favor of censorship. Is it ableist to ask, “Are you able to competently do this job that involves, among other things, authorizing the wars of the most powerful military force in human history?” Does that question stigmatize people in the midst of recovering from a stroke?
Etymologically, a stigma is just a mark or a dot. It’s appropriate to mark that this man has had a tragic, medically disabling thing happen to him. It is, in fact, journalistically inappropriate not to. Yet Steve Silberman, a prominent writer who also thinks disabilities can be addressed by disallowing talk about disabilities, tweeted his concern and opined that the fact that anyone mentioned the obvious mental incapacitation of a man running for Senate is a problem of representation: “If you’re paying attention, some of the loudest voices in journalism are now conducting a master class on how *NOT* to cover a politician with a #disability. Dramatic reminder that the industry desperately, desperately needs to hire more #disabled journalists.” There were hundreds more like this.
Much like the Republican candidate for Senate in Georgia is obviously so mentally unwell as to be unfit for office based on his own public behaviors and the discussion of his own psychiatric state, Fetterman is at this time not capable of doing the job he is applying for. That is unfortunate for him; he’s not an old man, and I hope he recovers much more from the disabling stroke he suffered a day before winning the Democratic primary. I like pre-stroke Fetterman, despite his many bad ideas and attempts to seem like a working-class hero while living a louche life, and I would have supported him over the TV charlatan and traitorous Erdogan cutout Dr. Oz. But I can’t any longer since he is quite obviously not capable of discharging the duties of a senator. It doesn’t take a doctor to perceive.
You also have to be a special kind of uncritical person to allow yourself to believe nonsense such as that there is some major social stigma against people in the middle of recovering from a stroke. Some people may accidentally and viscerally look askance at a drooping face, but it’s not really a thing. People generally wish stroke sufferers well and roughly correctly adjudge how disabled they are by the affliction and how likely they are to recover from it on what timeline. So why is it “ableist” to mention that Fetterman’s stroke is a factor in thinking about his candidacy? Some members of the press just make stuff up to get Democrats elected, including throwing around meaningless, condescending buzzwords about nonexistent phenomena. Let’s start stigmatizing that, perhaps.
