Ok, now it's really really getting to me atm, the amount of times I am hearing this word used as a form of humour, to take the piss out of other people etc. Some of you might remember my tirade against Richard Curtis (thank you everyone who joined in with that) for using it in Love Actually. And recently I wrote to the editor at the Daily Telegraph about an article regarding the paralypmics, and one journalist's viewpoint that it wasn't worth the airspace (no reply from them, but lots of letters printed agreeing with the journo in question, interestingly enough)
Now I've rattled off another email to channel 4 and ofcom, about the tv programme "Make me a perfect wife". Did anyone notice one of the husbands calling his wife a spastic? Icing on the cake, as dh was sitting next to a bunch of people in a pub at the weekend listening to them calling each other spastics, and doing their version of impersonations.
I am so sick and tired of people thinking it is ok to insult and make fun of disabled people. Bet Channel 4 wouldn't dream of lettting racist or religious abuse through , so why are disabled people fair game? I could possibly understand it, if the programme was about the ignorant attitudes of certain parts of society today, but it wasn't at all relevent to the programme itself.
Anyway, if anyone had read this far, and wants to see what I wrote, here it is:
"I am writing regarding the first programme of the above series and to register a complaint.
Can you please tell me why Channel 4, while filming the lives of these people, running it through editing, and checking for final viewing, allowed, or thought it acceptable to include a speech from one of the husbands, in which he calls his wife a spastic? Is it amusing, clever? Were you trying to make him look a fool? Whatever your reasons I am greatly offended.
As a mother of a 3 1/2 year old son, who has cerebral palsy , spastic diplegia, I find it incomprehensible, that in this day and age, there are still people and tv companies, who are willing to use this sort of language as a form of humour. My son struggles every day to do the most basic things. He has only recently learned to sit without lots of support, he cannot stand at all, or walk,he is in a wheelchair, he can only crawl when not using it. He is highly intelligent, and talks all the time about how when he is bigger he is going to walk like his daddy, and play football. He struggles to do things even the very youngest toddlers can do without thinking, yet he is a charming, bright, humourous little soul, who bears no malice to anyone. Would someone from the channel 4 team like to pay a visit to my house, and spend some time with myself and my son, then maybe I could have an explanation as to why including the word spastic in the show was seen as a legitimate source of entertainment?
You may say it is relevent to show what sort of character this man has, but no, it isn't. It has nothing at all to do with the subject of the series, and would have made no difference at all to the way the programme ran, if you had just edited it out.
I am sick and tired of hearing this phrase bandied about, as though people with this type of cerebral palsy, and their families, are unimportant. You wouldn't dare let a racist comment slip through, or a religious attack, for fear of complaints, so how dare you feel it acceptable to make fun of disabled people. My son didn't choose to have cerebral palsy, he should be entitled to have an equal life to those of the non disabled, and that includes not having such ignorant and offensive comments used in everyday life, because of something which is not a lifestyle choice.
I will be contacting Ofcom as well."
Maybe it is our fault for not pulling people up on it when we have the chance. Maybe we should all try and point out that this is unacceptable when we hear these kind of offensive comments. Dh says to his utter shame he said nothing, because there were many in the group, all drunk, and he was quite frankly worried as to how they would react.
Thanks for reading my rant if you have got this far.
Heartily pissed off lou33