I just watched the Kos / Tancredo and I've never been more offended in my life. Not because of Tom Tancredo's views on any number of issues, but because of Kos' swipe at Tancredo.
Kos, I'm mentally ill. I suffer from depression. It's not always what's portrayed in film or on TV. In fact, most of the time it's manageable. I can function and do so as much as I possibly can. But when my depression gets bad, there are days when I feel like I'm on the edge of a cliff and anything could send me spilling over. I have to wake up every day prepared to battle against a disease that the large portion of society around me thinks is controllable.
It's not. But what's worse, the media present mental illness in a way that is absolutely offensive. Too often, the mentally ill are lumped into stereotypical unshaven, unclean folk or seen as disingenuous con-artists looking to prey on sympathies to avoid putting in their honest share of work.
I remember the one time my depression got so bad that I couldn't move. I was so scared and so utterly devoid of hope that I was stuck, curled in a ball, crying. It was my 19th birthday and I was in a restaurant bathroom and I just couldn't move.
I hadn't yet been diagnosed. To the world at large, I was still perfectly okay. Nobody knew anything was wrong. It was only long after my parents found me and we worked out a plan to find a psychologist that even I accepted that I was a suffer of depression. Even after that, there was so much guilt associated to even discussing my illness that it felt almost as paralyzing as being stuck in that bathroom all over again. What was worse is that I felt I didn't qualify for help. I felt that there was such a stigma about even saying the words, "I suffer from depression". And yet, I knew that even in my classes I needed help. But still, I found myself bound and gagged by this ridiculous stigma and by mean comments like those from Angry Mouse about the role depression ought to play in one's interactions (absolutely none).
Congrats, Kos: you've just helped promote that. You've helped promote the idea that it's okay to mistreat the mentally ill.
You've helped promote the idea that it's okay to lock them in cages.
You've helped turn us into a symbol of disrespect.
Were I in Tom Tancredo's shoes, I'd have done the same thing. What you did today was wrong. The mentally ill in this country have a hard enough time without being used as punching-bags or turned into scapegoats.
You owe us an apology, Kos.
UPDATE: And even if Tom Tancredo was lying, where's the goddamn proof? For those who read this and want to say that Tancredo was a draft-dodger, then provide me proof and I'll take down this diary. But to sit here and listen while someone who is supposedly "reality-based" spreads patently false ideas about depression is absolutely not something I will abide.