THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, April 7, 1996 TAG: 9604040041
SECTION: REAL LIFE PAGE: K3 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: ALEXANDRIA BERGER
LENGTH: Medium: 66 lines
HYPOCRISY is nothing new to Hollywood and TV. As if you didn't know that.
But in recent weeks I've been heartsick to see these industries surpass even their own penchants for saying one thing and doing another.
Tinseltown: I'm watching the Oscars. Between poor readers and Whoopi Goldberg's humor, out comes Kirk Douglas to receive this year's Humanitarian Award for ``50 years as a creative and moral force.''
His family, including the famous Michael, is in tears. Douglas has suffered a severe stroke, and Hollywood, as only it can, tonight chooses to honor one of its fallen heroes. Douglas, paralyzed on the right side of his face, gives a physically difficult, heart-wrenching speech, honoring his wife, his children. I'm moved to streaming tears, and not because of what he says. Here is a man of appreciable ego facing the world contorted by illness. He is unashamed. He shows guts and enormous character.
There are currently no roles for an elderly actor, paralyzed from a stroke. This is Douglas' swan song.
Moments later, the curtain goes up to reveal wheelchair-bound Christopher Reeve, connected to ventilator. As the camera pans the audience, some of Hollywood's finest appear embarrassed, some moved to tears. The Academy has invited Reeve to participate in a segment on movies with a ``social conscience.''
The Academy also chose to write Reeve's speech, evidently on the assumption that spinal injuries make one ``thinking-impaired.'' Reeve acknowledges through a print interview, ``I wanted this to be personal, something I really cared about saying. They were nice enough to let me rewrite it . . . .''
One ``social conscience'' film clip fades to the next. Not one involves the disabled. But Reeve shows the audience something more important: his incredible will to survive and remain productive.
Hollywood, take note. The disabled can see, hear and think.
As ``true'' heroes, Douglas and Reeve have more to say now about human strength, dignity and courage than they did portraying make-believe he-men.
Douglas gave his sons a lesson in reality. Christopher Reeve held his head high, which took more strength than holding up a skyscraper.
Hollywood habitually waits until its big night to boom platitudes honoring its toppled. Yet, after the set is struck, Tinseltown repeatedly dumps damaged actors and actresses. They become memories in the celluloid archives, a permanent homage to human perfection.
Washington and TV politics: Bob Dole, running for president as a Republican, is physically disabled. Get it? PHYSICALLY DISABLED. The man can't button his own shirts, shake hands, wave briskly to crowds, do hand gestures on television, hug children, jog, swing a golf club, or in general look like a media stallion. He is not a photo opportunity.
Severely injured in World War II, suffering a crushed spine, left with a permanently paralyzed right arm and partially paralyzed left arm, Dole is physically stiff. You'd be stiff too, if your spine was glued together.
So, when the television media criticize Dole's body stance as robotlike, awkward and annoying, I want to stick the hand mikes of TV reporters up their Nielsen ratings.
Politics aside, taking a degrading, insensitive, underhanded, ignorant cheap shot at a disabled person who has fought to achieve is unethical reporting at its worst. MEMO: Write Alexandria Berger in care of Real Life, The Virginian-Pilot, 150
W. Brambleton Ave., Norfolk, Va. 23510.
by CNB