I just re-discovered this little gem from Charles Krauthammer (SJ Merc, 7C, July 11, 1999):
To be sure, patronizing the disabled is not as offensive as...in-your-face mockery...But its effect is similar: to distance oneself, to give expression to the reflexive mixture of fear and pity that misfortune in others invokes in all of us.
Disability--like exile, the human condition it most resembles--neither ennobles or degrades. It frames experience. It does not define it.
In 1972, Mr. Krauthammer was paralyzed in a serious diving accident.
"And if an epitaph be my story, I'd have a short one ready for my own: I had a lover's quarrel with the world." -- Robert Frost
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