Saturday Slumgullion #8

• Massachusetts passes "equal choice" home care legislation with expectations it will save $154 million over the next five years. "The new law would allow greater flexibility to shift part of that Medicaid money to home care for personal care attendants, private duty nurses, adult day care, and medical transportation." Via Ragged Edge


• Disabled people "left behind" during Hurricane Katrina, The New Standard reports, and nationwide emergency preparedness mostly fail to take into account the special concerns of disabled people. One example, the New Orleans disability-rights organization Advocacy Center is suing FEMA with claims that even five months after Katrina the agency had still not provided accessible trailers to disabled refugees. Via Rolling Rains


• A review from 2001 captures the reasons for the filmfest success of the documentary How's Your News? which I reviewed recently here. From IndieWire:

At first, "How's Your News?" comes off as a crass joke, tasteless and manipulative. But this time, the bad joke starts to crack itself open. As we watch these reporters repeatedly subjected to humiliation, but retaining their mission and good humor, we begin to wonder: is it us, the audience, who is imposing our authority to judge them? "''How's Your News?' goes against the grain of how disabled people have ever been portrayed in the movies," Pierson argues. "We're not told to feel sorry, or happy, for them. They had a great time. They put themselves out there. The film doesn't take a point of view for or against them, and that's what critics might react against."

The initial discomfort some might feel at watching "How's Your News?", Pierson continues, is something you can't feel in a theater. "At home, in isolation," he admits, "it can be a different experience. You have to examine yourself and wonder how to react. In a theater, within a few minutes, you get it along with everyone else."

• Criticisms of Jerry Lewis and the MDA notwithstanding, the current issue of Quest, the magazine of the MDA, carries an interesting piece on "Multiple Minorities" and what happens when a person is both disabled and nonwhite or Jewish or gay.
  


• So brand spanking new it's not yet fully online, Independent Today is a new disability webzine worth keeping an eye on.
  


• Here's a review of Brothers of the Head, a movie about conjoined twins who form a punk band. Looks promising, though I won't see it until it hits Netflix.
  


• And my online friend Piny has written eloquently about how pity is not just for disabled folks, but is also a theme of charity done in/for Africa (yes, pity for a continent of people) and is just as troublesome and repugnant in that form. The comments are great too.