This incident is perhaps telling:
The Center for Disability Rights knocked Democratic presidential hopeful John Edwards' speech in Rochester, saying Edwards didn't have sign language interpreters and instead patted the heads of people in wheelchairs.
"It seems that Sen. Edwards lacks disability etiquette," Debbie Bonomo, who has cerebral palsy, said in a news release. "Just because I am a woman who uses a wheelchair, does not mean anyone should be patting me on the head. That is so 1950s."
[snip]
As for patting people in wheelchairs on the head, spokesman Colin Van Ostern said, "I'm sure his interaction with them was intended to be respectful."
It may seem like a small matter - patting disabled people on the head - but it seems to have angered those he did it to. Probably rightfully so. I am sure that disabled people are painfully sensitive to other people condescending to them.
Edwards' apparent failure to understand this does suggest a certain condescending tone to his campaign noticed by some of us who have yet to jump on the Edwards bandwagon. It also suggests a certain gap between the rhetoric and the Senator's record.
Many of us do not want a candidate who believes in us or cares about us or feels our pain personally - such suggestions sound, to me at least, transparently false. I want someone who is going to fight for my interests, not someone who is going to pat me on the head, figuratively speaking.