In the Internet environment, it's the fast-paced columnists who get to comment the most, which is a pity, because careful, analytical thought requires some time, and any culture that doesn't allow for careful thought will find itself deluged with the kind of garbage US Weekly 's cover presented to grocery store customers this week, the caption: "Sarah Palin's afflicted child." You know, when I was growing up in south Georgia, only the most crass and despicable people referred to people with disabilities as "afflicted." This caption, as well as all of the barbarous blogs on Trig Palin have revealed us to be a society of tech-savvy thugs, something that depresses me on an almost daily basis.
It is the height of irony that Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama lays claim to the idea of embracing diversity, while many of his supporters lash out at GOP VP candidate Sarah Palin for embracing real diversity on a daily basis in a very intimate way. If you are truly tolerant of the differences of others, how is it possible that you can condemn a woman for welcoming into her family someone with Down syndrome, someone who is more discriminated against than women or blacks?
So it was with great pleasure and relief that I read Michael Gerson's column on Palin's youngest ,Trig. Here's an excerpt from this beautiful and erudite piece, "Trig's Breakthrough":
In addition to Barack Obama making history as the first African American to be nominated for president and Sarah Palin taking her shotgun to the glass ceiling, there was a third civil rights barrier broken at the political conventions this year.
Trig Paxson Van Palin -- pronounced by his mother "beautiful" and "perfect" and applauded at center stage of the Republican convention -- smashed the chromosomal barrier. And it was all the more moving for the innocence and indifference of this 4-month-old civil rights leader.
It was not always this way. John F. Kennedy's younger sister Rosemary, who was born in 1918, had a mental disability that was treated as a family secret. For decades Rosemary was hidden as a "childhood victim of spinal meningitis." Joseph Kennedy subjected his daughter to a destructive lobotomy when she was 23. It was the remarkable Eunice Kennedy Shriver who talked openly of her sister's condition in 1962 and went on to found the Special Olympics as a summer camp in her back yard -- part of a great social movement of compassion and inclusion.
Trig's moment in the spotlight is a milestone of that movement. But it comes at a paradoxical time. Unlike what is accorded African Americans and women, civil rights protections for people with Down syndrome have rapidly eroded over the past few decades. Of the cases of Down syndrome diagnosed by prenatal testing each year, about 90 percent are eliminated by abortion...
You can read more of Gerons' piece in today's Washington Post.