On July 18, Million Dollar Baby arrived in the video stores, and I was there to get it.  Most of them were gone, already rented, influencing America.  But there were still a few, hanging back from the ledge, spread out amongst the top two shelves, well out of my reach.

I approached a nearby patron and requested assistance.  This is the stuff some people get off on.  The do-gooders.  They are secretly waiting for the Disabled to request assistance so they can spring into action and fulfill some mystical karmic debt that nobody believes in but them and their kind.  

They always smile, overindulgent in their actions.  “What can I do for you?  You need this,” reaching before you answer, “Anything else?”

Nolo contendere.  Universal access has never caught on, probably because it’s just too damn expensive to accommodate all the cripples, all the time. 

Fortunately the person I asked to grab the video I could not reach (ADA be damned) did not turn out to be a do-gooder.  He was short, though, which really doesn’t matter, because even a person of modest height has a better reach than I.  Besides, I have the perfect introduction to the request, with flattery included.

“You look like your pretty tall, would you mind….”

For a person who is 6’3” when standing, asking a short person to retrieve an item off a top shelf can be a devastatingly humiliating experience.  Riding my Quickie, I measure up to, well, less than five feet, and my 32-inch reach only gets me so high.  In the world of disability, it always seems to be Us who end up accommodating Them, or rather, their egos. 

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That’s why it’s so darn frustrating when They make it harder on Us.  They give Us the power (even write it on paper and call it the ‘ADA’) to remove the obstacles and barriers to achieving a society based on equality, a level playing field, then They chain Us up to an impractical legal system. 

There is no satisfaction in waiting for justice, especially if all you’re waiting on is a judge’s decision in favor of the oppressor.

It’s also aggravating when Hollywood releases a movie like Million Dollar Baby.  It’s even more infuriating when the movie is lauded as the greatest reel of the year, being careful not to mention the surprise ending. 

Would the movie have been such a success had They, the nondisabled public, known that the surprise ending involved a mercy killing?  Well, we are talking about the same folks who drew a sigh of relief when Teri Schiavo’s tube was removed and she starved to death.

Yes, there have always been nondisabled folks marching beside and behind us on the front lines of the disability rights movement, but their numbers are too few.  There are still those who would rather be seated in a restaurant near the kitchen than sit next to a slobbering cripple; and there are those who would have us killed to insure a better future for the so-called able-bodied ones they love. 

Let me just say this up front about the movie as a whole: the film was well-made, the story (as a former nondisabled person, I can say this) inspired and uplifted (the do-gooders), and the actors did what actors are expected to do … they entertained.

But what was the lesson?  When the going gets tough, get someone to kill you?

Or should the audience interpret the film as “even the toughest people believe dead is better than disabled”?

I am not a quadriplegic, so I do not know, from first-hand experience, what it is like to be a C1-C2 complete quadriplegic, as was the character depicted in the film.  But I did share a room in rehab with two quadriplegics, and neither one of them ever tried to chew off their own tongue.

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Yeah, yeah, I know that many, many nondisabled people would rather be dead than paralyzed from the neck down.  But hell, if someone had told me at age 19 that I would be a paraplegic by the age of 21, I probably would have said, “When the accident happens, kill me before I regain consciousness.

And when the accident did happen, when I did lay there in the hot desert sun for 45 minutes, waiting on the ambulance to whisk me away, and after my heart did stop beating twice in the helicopter on the way to the university hospital, I was still glad to be alive when I woke up in ICU.  Maybe it was the morphine, but I doubt it.  

Most people don’t know what they are capable of until the opportunity comes for them to find out, and a vast majority of people would rather live, experience life, than give it all up.

I don’t buy that crap in the movie where the character says she wants to die because she doesn’t want her life to become a waste.  Obviously, her early success spoiled her. 

Over and over again, Clint Eastwood’s character pounds into the female boxer’s head, “Always protect yourself.  Always protect yourself.”  She even accepts the blame for her neck fracture, saying she should’ve protected herself, like he said. 

What about protecting herself from her guilt-ridden trainer/manager, who happens to also be the writer, producer, and director of the film, when he comes to kill her? 

I knew what was going to happen.  I knew he was going to kill her because I had read about it all when the movie hit the theaters. 

I refused to see it in the theaters.  Mostly because I didn’t want to financially contribute to such a hopeless form of disability representation.  How many family members or friends thought about killing their beloved little quad the next time they saw them?  Jeezus, how many went home and asked these people if they ever thought about killing themselves?

The movie relies on the kind of sympathy-through-pity BS that puts the real/actual burden on people with disabilities.  People, individuals, eventually adjust to having a disability, unless they’ve got some other serious stuff messing with their head, like childhood molestation or abuse or the overwhelming expectation of others that their life is now shit.

The character in Million Dollar Baby never had the opportunity to adjust, because the screenwriter wrote her off.  He gave her pressure sores that resulted in leg amputation, when you know damn well those rehab people would be turning her every three hours or so, waking her up in the middle of the night to flip her like a pancake.

Now if she had been in the stereotypical nursing home….

So does this mean there is a new standard for stereotypes depicting physical rehabilitation centers?  I’ve always thought the rehab environment in Waterdance more accurately portrayed the adventurous life of rehab living.

Also, they never got her out of bed!  She never had to even go to physical therapy or occupational therapy.  You know if the Nevada boxing commission had really been paying for the bill, like the broken-necked boxer said they were, she would have had the best care. 

I guess Eastwood wanted to portray his version of reality as a ‘bed-ridden’ cripple. 

I give the movie two thumbs up Eastwood's ass.  Maybe if I shove them deep enough, I can bruise the lumbar section of his spinal cord. Then we can see if he’ll do crips a favor and off himself.

I didn't return the video.  Why would I do that, so more schmucks can get the idea in their head that dead is preferable to disabled?  I think not.

No, I went to the video store and told them I lost the movie, paid the value of the DVD in cash, and left without saying a word about the ableist smut they're peddling. 

If every self-respecting crip in the country did the same thing, rented Million Dollar Blowhard, then coughed up the cash for the movie before destroying it, we could make a statement.

Yeah, like that would ever happen.

This ain't the Sixties anymore.  People can hardly spell ‘solidarity,’ let alone practice it.  Hardly anyone anymore even knows the meaning of a ‘call to action.’

Cripples will go on being cripples, and the Disabled will move inches, instead of miles, toward equality. 

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After I paid for the movie I said I'd lost, I rolled out the front door and never turned around.

I went back home and got the movie case and disc, grabbed my shotgun and .45, and went to the local outdoor gun range to practice my aim.

It was the best $33.47 I've ever spent.