The Best of Disability Blogs and Banter

Celebrities Behaving Badly

Kanye West
New Mobility’s Facebook page exploded as articles with headlines like this one from the United Kingdom’s Metro hit the Web: “Kanye West Stops Show to Make Sure Everyone is Standing Up, Including Fan in Wheelchair.” West let a fan who waved a prosthetic remain seated with an, “OK, you fine,” but led the audience into heckling the remaining sitting fan until, finally, he sent his bodyguard to make sure that fan really was a wheelchair user.

“I have a three minute video of Kanye waiting for a guy in a wheelchair to stand up,” tweeted concert goer jasmyn (@dahmynn) during the Sept. 12 event.

“All the wrong people are paralyzed,” quipped Stephen Feldman, a quad, on our Facebook page. Most of the comments abandoned wit for outrage — colorful language punctuated with words like “loser” and the ever-popular “asshat.”

A few days later, we posted a satire from The Daily Currant, “Kanye Scores 106 Points Against Wheelchair Basketball Team.” Here’s a snippet from the spoof: “Eighth grader Tommy Smith told reporters, ‘We play with shorter basketball hoops and he was dunking all over us. The smack talk got out of hand and some of our players started crying.’”

It was so well done that quite a few readers didn’t realize it was made up. “How do we know for sure it’s a hoax?” asked one.

Ken Jennings
Meanwhile, on Twitter, Ken Jennings — the guy who won $3 million on Jeopardy — possibly blew his chance at getting his own show with this infamous Sept. 22 tweet: “Nothing sadder than a hot person in a wheelchair.”

“@KenJennings Really? Like being in a wheelchair makes them less appealing? Please think before spouting ableist nonsense,” replied Jess Banks (@ProfBanks), which is a rather restrained response.

Our favorite is from Ron Marz (@ronmarz), “I’ll take Dumb Tweets From a Supposedly Smart Guy for $500, Alex.”