John Fetterman had a stroke, and he has been open and honest about his fight to come back from that. Months later, looking at a tightening race in which Fetterman narrowly leads in most polls, a series of high-profile media figures have decided that it’s time to make things more fun by dogpiling on Fetterman’s stroke recovery, which they currently seem to see as a much more significant issue than his opponent’s history of pushing shady “medical” products and mass-murdering dogs.
The situation is this: Fetterman still has difficulty with auditory processing—to do an interview, for instance, or a debate, he needs to read what is being said to him, using widely available closed captioning technology. Having read it, he can answer out loud, with occasional verbal slip-ups. Similarly, he can deliver campaign speeches with a few stumbles over words as his recovery continues.
RELATED STORY: Oz said uninsured Americans don't have 'right to health,' a hell of a thing for a doctor to say
After Fetterman did an interview with NBC News’s Dasha Burns in which he used closed captioning, successfully, to take questions, the media Heathers pounced.
“This is a rough clip for @JohnFetterman, will only fuel questions about his health,” high-profile New York Times reporter Jonathan Martin tweeted.
”An important interview with top Senate contender,” CBS News reporter Ed O'Keefe chimed in. “Will Pennsylvanians be comfortable with someone representing them who had to conduct a TV interview this way?”
The man is reading! That’s it. And occasionally he has a brief verbal struggle like this one, in that NBC interview: “I always thought I was pretty empathetic, uh … “ he said, pausing, raising his eyes. “Emphetic. I think I was very, excuse me, empathetic—you know, that’s an example of the stroke—empathetic. I always thought I was very empathetic before having a stroke. But now after having that stroke I really understand you know, much more, the kind of challenges that Americans have day in and day out.” (Let me as the transcriptionist of that snippet note, on the subject of Fetterman’s speech, that he was speaking at a normal-to-fast pace.)
There’s some gross ableism going on here in the insistence that there’s only one right way to communicate. We have on camera yet another a display of Fetterman’s ability to read and process information quickly and formulate coherent responses—the reason this is being discussed now rather than after any of his other recent television interviews is because he sat in a room with Burns instead of appearing remotely (as is, after all, standard for most cable news interviews) where his closed captioning computer could be off-screen—but it’s “rough” and something that Pennsylvanians would legitimately be uncomfortable with, according to Martin and O’Keefe. Just as President Franklin Delano Roosevelt hid his paralysis in photographs, Fetterman’s disability becomes an issue when he allows it to become visible rather than using formats where he can hide it.
People with disabilities are dramatically underrepresented in government, MNSBC columnist Liz Plank writes, and often face barriers to basic forms of participation like voting. That should be a matter of concern to the media, yet instead we’re seeing concern about the possibility that a man whose doctors say he is on track to a full recovery from a stroke and who has taken two cognitive tests with results in the normal range could win a Senate election.
“Stigma against people with disabilities does real tangible harm,” disability rights activist Rebecca Cokley told Plank. “If a disabled person has demonstrated they can fulfill the task of a job with or without accommodations, there should be no questions about their fitness to serve. The numerous people with disabilities that have served with honor in our communities, in Congress, in the White House, and our nation’s Supreme Court, show us that disability is not a disqualifier.”
The thing is, for media figures like Martin and O’Keefe, the issue is not whether Fetterman is fit to serve in the Senate. They care about the horserace, about the inevitable tightening of a battleground state election, and it’s much more fun for them if it’s really close. With Fetterman still in the lead, it serves their purpose to tear him down even as they dedicate much less attention to his Republican opponent’s massive liabilities. And the entire framing of the NBC News clip from Burns’ interview with Fetterman plays right into that. He, and not any policy, is the subject of the piece.
“Dr. Oz likes to make fun of me that I might miss a word,” Fetterman says in the interview, in one of NBC’s limited concessions to the importance of things other than John Fetterman’s stroke recovery. “But, you know, he’s missed two words. And that is yes or no on the national abortion ban. If you’re going to be our next senator, you have to give the answer.” The problem is, too many in the national media are right there with Oz in wanting to talk about closed captioning and missed words rather than abortion.
Daily Kos has identified three U.S. Senate seats that could flip from red to blue in 2022. Please donate $1 to each of these races right now.
There is no more effective way for you to help turn out infrequent but Democratic-leaning voters in key congressional districts and Senate swing states this year than Vote Forward. Sign up to write personalized letters to targeted voters from the comfort of your home, on your own schedule, using a statistically proven method and without ever having to talk to anyone at all.
RELATED STORIES:
John Fetterman responds to Dr. Oz's puppy-killing scandal with cavalcade of cuteness
Pennsylvania women are showing up for Fetterman with abortion on the line
Report details exactly why Mehmet Oz kept pushing hydroxychloroquine for COVID-19
On this week's episode of The Downballot we get medieval on the traditional media for its appalling display of ableism in the wake of John Fetterman's recent NBC interview; recap the absolutely wild goings-on in Los Angeles, where City Council President Nury Martinez just resigned after a racist tirade was caught on tape; dive into the unexpectedly close race for governor in Oklahoma; and highlight a brand-new database from Daily Kos Elections showing how media markets and congressional districts overlap.
