{"id":104,"date":"2009-01-20T15:24:28","date_gmt":"2009-01-20T22:24:28","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/?p=104"},"modified":"2009-01-20T15:24:28","modified_gmt":"2009-01-20T22:24:28","slug":"cheneys-villainy-nothing-to-do-with-his-wheelchair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Cheney’s Villainy — Nothing to Do with His Wheelchair"},"content":{"rendered":"

I never thought I’d be sticking up for Dick Cheney. But his appearance at the Inauguration today, riding in a wheelchair pushed by several Marines, has elicited so many nasty, disabiliphobic comments, that I find myself… well, not exactly defending Cheney, but at least defending the dignity of wheelchair use.<\/p>\n

Cheney apparently pulled a back muscle, and has to stay off his feet for a few days. Granted, with his clunky chair and his scowling countenance, he’s not exactly the model of the hip, sexy crip. Too many commentators, however, have turned the wheelchair into a mark of shame. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said<\/a>, “The Vice President in that wheelchair… is a metaphor for the low esteem with which he’s held in this country. His numbers are pathetically low.” (Is Matthews aware of the fact that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, one of the most effective and <\/em>most popular presidents, governed from a wheelchair?)<\/p>\n

Around the Internet, I’ve seen numerous gleeful references to the image of Cheney in a wheelchair. Several compared him to Dr. Strangelove, the maniacal nuclear scientist in Stanley Kubrick’s film. Others invoke Mr. Potter, that mean old banker in Frank Capra’s It’s a Wonderful Life<\/em>.<\/p>\n

We don’t need another villain in a wheelchair. A villain he may be, with shared responsibility for torture, repression, and all kinds of other crimes against humanity. But the wheelchair has nothing to do with it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I never thought I’d be sticking up for Dick Cheney. But his appearance at the Inauguration today, riding in a wheelchair pushed by several Marines, has elicited so many nasty, disabiliphobic comments, that I find myself… well, not exactly defending Cheney, but at least defending the dignity of wheelchair use. Cheney apparently pulled a back […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[57,58,59,19],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-disability-advocacy-politics","tag-dick-cheney","tag-inauguration","tag-villains","tag-wheelchair"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":106,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/106"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/laurahershey.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}