“Crippled, cursed, deadened, decrepit, diseased, feeble, ill, inadequate, incompetent, invalidated, powerless, screwed up, sickly, stupefied, tampered, undermined, unhealthy, weakened.”
What does each of the above words have in common? They all describe me, or at least my condition. After all, every single word is a synonym for “disabled.” But here’s the funny thing – I don’t feel decrepit. I’d like to think I am not inadequate. Some might say I’m screwed up, I guess that can be debated, but I don’t really feel too sickly. And while it’s happened in the past, at the moment I do not find myself stupefied.
I’m willing to bet that any thesaurus/dictionary you choose to consult for other meanings of the word “disabled” will give you a plethora of choices that sound very ugly. And I will double down on my bet and venture to say that if someone asked you to describe me, you would probably choose another word other than the choices you been given. Kind of makes you stop and think, huh?
Anyway, I’m not writing to discuss the fact that society continues to apply labels to my condition, or that the world we live in relies so heavily on assigning labels to anything and everything, so that it can be explained in a way that “makes sense” to us all. I broached the subject more as a segue into discussing something else that miffed me.
I mentioned in a previous post that the Paralympics start today in London. I’ve had the date marked on my calendar for quite a while and am excited to watch some of the events, including those in which I personally know some of the athletes competing. However, you can imagine my dismay when I discovered earlier today that the network will only broadcast four days of coverage. They will not begin to air any event until September 4, and plan to limit each broadcast to an hour. I can’t say I was shocked to learn this, but was very disappointed.
But if you want to be shocked, consider this: NBC aired roughly 5,535 hours of Olympics coverage across all of its media platforms. They are choosing to air a whopping 4 hours of Paralympics coverage (Olympics coverage).
The normal athletes get the equivalent of almost 240 days of coverage. The “crippled and cursed” athletes get 240 minutes of TV time. Yes, you read that right, 240 DAYS versus 240 MINUTES! Not trying to sound biased, but, I would think that watching a woman with 1 leg compete in a 200m freestyle swimming race is a bit more exciting than watching the able-bodied athletes purposely try to lose a badminton match. Nothing against badminton, but does that sport really warrant more coverage than the entire Paralympics?
I apologize if this diatribe comes off sounding bitter, as that is not my intention. However, in this case, I think it is NBC who needs to apologize for shortchanging the remarkable, albeit, “incompetent and powerless” athletes competing over the next 12 days. These extraordinary individuals were certainly “undermined.” At least the thesaurus got one of the words right.
Stand Strong!
Scott