MUST-READ HuffPo post on the new Michael J. Fox ad. Seriously, read this.

[Human Torch]

If you haven't seen the Michael J. Fox ad, you can watch the clip at the link below. It will break your heart.

What Would Jesus Do, Asshole?



James Boyce

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/james-boyce/what-would-jesus-do-assh_b_32225.html

I can't tell you how much this ad with Michael J Fox upsets me. I had the chance to meet him during the Kerry Campaign, and he is such a good person and to see him so much worse, barely twenty four months later breaks my heart.
It just is truly awful.

And then I checked out the reaction to this ad and see plenty of right wing nut cases chortling that we ought to send him back to Canada because he was born there? Here's a comment someone actually posted on YouTube.

"This dude is a Canadian. Why is he in the US talking to Congress, faking being American? Because we need to fix him up, all our resources are to go to him, because he has a problem. Go to Canada, they have socialized medicine, maybe they can help you. Oh, that's why you are here. I get it now."

Please, allow me to be the first to say: Fuck you.

I just can't take this anymore.

They destroy veterans to win elections so they can play toy soldiers and kill our children.

They smear and attack and lie.

And here's a man, a father to young children, a good person - and we're not doing everything humanly possible to help him? Everything humanly possible is the only moral and ethical choice here. The only one.

Wonder where we would be if the millions we spend every hour in Iraq were spent on stem cell research?

Wonder if Jesus would think maybe we should re-allocate some funds? And reconsider our opposition to saving lives? What do you think?

[KingFlorez]

1. I didn't realize he had gotten that bad

Freepers don't care about anyone, they think this sort of thing is not important. It doesn't bother them to see some this ill.

[Human Torch]

3. They also don't appreciate the courage it takes...

...to go before the cameras when you're that ill. That's primarily because they're armchair quarterbacks for a fake-ass frat boy who ducked combat duty so he could work his way through 3/4 of his flight training at taxpayers' expense before going AWOL. They don;t know how to deal with real courage.

:patriot:

[Arugula Latte]

7. I wonder if that's the way he is with his meds or without...

If he took his meds and he's still that bad ... wow. It just makes me want to cry.

How anyone could deny people like him stem cell research is mind-boggling and shows just how much the Christofascist freaks have run this country into the ground.

[tblue]

9. Because they believe it will never happen to them, and they are somehow

immune from tragedy. As Garrison Keillor said,

A Democrat knows that the leaf turns and in the human comedy we are one day spectators and the next day performers. The gains in life come slowly and the losses come on suddenly...

The fear of catastrophe could chill the soul but the social compact assures you that if the wasps come after you, if gruesome disease strikes down your child, if you find yourself hopelessly lost, incapable, drowning in despair, running through the rye toward the cliff, then the rest of us will catch you and tend to you and not only your friends but We the People in the form of public servants. This is a basic necessity in a developed society. Men and women make love and have babies in the knowledge that if the baby should be born with cerebral palsy or Down syndrome or a hole in its heart and require heroic care, the people of Minnesota and of St. Paul will stand with you in your dark hour. If you are saddled with trouble too great for a person to bear, you will not be left to perish by the roadside in darkness. Without that assurance, we may as well go live in the woods and take our chances.

This is Democratic bedrock: we don't let people lie in the ditch and drive past and pretend not to see them dying. Here on the frozen tundra of Minnesota, if your neighbor's car won't start, you put on your parka and get the jumper cables out and deliver the Sacred Spark that starts their car. Everybody knows this. The logical extension of this spirit is social welfare and the myriad government programs with long dry names all very uninteresting to you until you suddenly need one and then you turn into a Democrat. A liberal is a conservative who's been through treatment.

http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0720-02.htm

[Patiod]

18. Glad to see Garrison's tak on my own personal motto

"A Conservative is just a Liberal who hasn't been mugged by Life yet."

I know SO many conservatives who opposed ADA until they needed it for someone in their own family and then - AMAZING - all of a sudden they're advocates for the disabled!

So much for "everyone for themselves", eh?

[Kutjara]

10. He may not be as "bad" as he appears.

Don't get me wrong, Michael has pretty major Parkinson's, but I read in his excellent biography Lucky Man about how he manages his condition. He has medication that can virtually eliminate the tremors, but it only lasts for a few hours, whereafter his tremors are far more violent than they would normally be (a feature of the body trying to 'overcorrect' itself). In the last season of Spin City, the director arranged the shooting schedule so that Michael knew exactly when he'd be on. He could take his meds about 30 minutes before that and be good to go for the next four hours. After that it was "shaky dad" (as his daughter calls him) time.

I suspect that, for this video, Michael didn't take his meds, so what you're seeing is the real effect of the disease on him. Unless we know what he was doing when the writer of the HuffPo article met him 24 months before, it's impossible to know how fast Michael is deteriorating.

I'm not saying this to denigrate or belittle Michael J. Fox in any way. I have great admiration and affection for him and can commend his book to anyone interested in how disease can sometimes give more than it takes away. But I also want those who like the man as much as I do to feel some hope that he's not declining rapidly. If anything, he looks about the same as in some other Parkinson's-related video he's made. There is still hope for treatment before he's too far gone.

[mantis49]

25. He's been a frequent guest star on Boston Legal.

My first thought when I saw this ad was he must not have taken his meds. On Boston Legal he's fairly well controlled, though his walking gait is weird: he throws his shoulders while he walks, I'm guessing to keep from shuffling in the typical Parkinson's gait.

[usregimechange]

2. Kicked and rec'ed

[babylonsister]

4. I must be a cheerleader, for MJFox and the Dems. I refuse to

let anyone distort what is going on.
And you should all refuse it also.
Let's concentrate on Fox's message when Dems take over because I have two people I love dearly who would benefit.

[Human Torch]

8. I have one person I love dearly who would benefit...

...and this person has the same kind of courage that Michael has, and...just like Michael...no matter how bad things get, it's never about "help me," it's about "what can I do for other people while I still have the strength to do it?"

:patriot:

[NMMNG]

5. "Faking being American"?

So the man has to be an American citizen to talk to Congress about a significant issue in the US? Freepers are such jagoffs. :eyes:

[Der Blaue Engel]

12. He's an American citizen

So what they're saying is that immigrants who become legal citizens are "faking" being American. Wow. I guess that covers all of us, eh, you pea-brained freepturds?

[NMMNG]

14. Ah, I thought he was a Canadian who had lived here for many years

But you're right, if naturalized citizens are "fakers" then that leaves a lot of people out in the cold. And what is natural born citizenry anyway except an accident of birth?

[AllegroRondo]

21. So I guess Arnold is 'faking' being an American too?

that should blow their minds.

[MnFats]

6. of course they are full of gleeful vitriol.

they were gleeful when Paul and Sheila Wellstone were killed in a plane crash.
their ilk will always be among us.
but they'll have much, much less power in the coming weeks.
they're about to get thrown out on their asses...

that said....Jesus, this ad breaks my heart. and i agree...making that ad took more courage than any of those assholes will have, or observe, in their lifetimes...

[Mr_Spock]

11. Not sure why RWers want to enrage people against them, but....

so long as they are only brave enough to do it behind their mighty keyboards, I suppose it's to be ignored.

You'd think there were no sick people in this county who could benefit from stem-cell research based on the deranged comment by that Freeptard. Then again, that would require humanity.

[madrchsod]

13. if they had a loved one with this disease

they would be the first in line for the cure. well maybe they would let a loved one suffer so they can hold on to their"principals"

[GeorgeGist]

15. They have no heroes...

but they do have Jesus' assurance of forgiveness.

[Vinca]

16. Or so they think. nt

[mucifer]

17. people keep saying he's not taking his meds. I have to say he's got a

degenerative disease that will kill him. He will get worse and worse. It will get uglier and uglier.
He will be in a wheelchair. He will stop speaking entirely. He will be bedridden. His receptive understanding of his world around him will not be affected. Unless some new reasearch can get some new meds out there it's not gonna change. It's not pretty. It's not Hollywood. It's reality.

[Human Torch]

20. You're right, it's not the meds...

...and one of the things that's needed is more public education on the symptoms and long-range effects of the disease. As the Huffington Post article states, funding for such a program could come from the buckets of cash we are throwing into the money pit of Iraq. There are other failed policies in this administration that could yield to some actual progress and improvement of human life.

:patriot:

[katinmn]

23. It's not the meds. Meds only work for so long. Meds are also a

trade-off. They stem some symptoms but make others worse.

[Rex_Goodheart]

19. It truly is a party of assholes...

Check out this thread on another message board:

http://www.tigerdroppings.com/rant/messagetopic.asp?p=3179297

[Ellis Wyatt]

22. Is there ANY

argument against stem cell research other than the thought that if it were legalized, it would somehow "encourage" people to get abortions?

Like medical marijuana, if there is something that everyone knows would make a positive impact on the lives of those living, how can those religious whack jobs tell people "Tough shit. Die and die painfully."

[NYCGirl]

26. That argument is patently false. Stem cell research does not use aborted

fetuses, but instead "blastocysts" used in in-vitro fertilization procedures. People would not be "encouraged" to have abortions, because abortions have NOTHING TO DO WITH IT.

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/282/5391/1145

[young_at_heart]

24. George and Laura need to see this

How do they sleep at night? How can they face themselves in a mirror? How dare they call themselves Christians!