I almost smacked someone over the internet today. Luckily for him, and his wannabe waifish and soulful photograph, physics forbids such actions. I found him because I've got Google set up to round up such crip-related news as makes the world press(and, of course, with disability as a keyword, a fair amount of announcements from workers comp attorneys. Sigh.) As I skimmed through the usual mix of SSDI questions, boiler-plate features "Little Jimmy Dugan hasn't let being blind keep him from taking all the prizes in junior astrophysics."I feel like I can feel the stars," the gutsy eight-year-old replied."(If you've ever read a newspaper in the last twenty years, you know this drill, which is why I find myself picking over my own navel lint in this column with alarming frequency)

Anyway, the blogosphere seldom lets me down, although not usually because it contains a reference to "Disability as a Golden Ticket."

It appeared in a personal blog, innocuously titled Quotidian Life. The offending post had the title "Disavowing Disability"

Nation, anyone see Willy Wonka around their place lately? Didn't think so. I'm not singling this guy out, and not just because it would hurt our cause to besiege his blog with mobs armed with mobility devices and torches. Fun though it may be to unleash years of thwarted emotions on some petty slight of some jerk several hundred miles away. But I can't quite let go on this one.

The attitude is too prevalent. Some under-employed white guy(Or, okay, he's not underemployed by our standards. But every so often, he pulls out that novel or demo tape from back in the day and sighs, thinking of All He Could Have Been, and resenting that any of his hard-earned money goes to anyone who won't man up and put on a smock.)

Guys like that always have "hard-earned money". It's a Thing. But I think their perspective is skewed by the fact that they think government trucks pull up to injured people's houses with buckets o' ducats, no(or few) questions asked. OK, right, and we found WMD in Saddam's gold bathroom too. Those of us actually in DisabillityNation know what a delicate balancing act getting through the month can be, no matter how "deserving" of aid recipients we are or are not.(Another interesting feature of this kind of dude is that he knows if he comes off mean or like a cheapskate, he might not get any play ever again. So he is very careful to draw a clear, bright line between his Ideal Cripple and those he sees as "Gaming the system." He's not an ass, he's a modern Diogenes, wandering cyberspace looking for an honest gimp.)

It's noble, really. And Pamela Anderson is a real blonde.

I do really feel sorry for these guys, ableism aside.They are hurting because they are facing a world where they might not get the unearned privileges their dads got for being male(so you had to learn to make your own food. Get over it.) Giant corporations are squeezing them and a consolidated media is telling them why stockholders are happy about it. As the outsider, I have to learn about the problems that affect their world. I wish they had to learn about the things that affect mine.

--Erika Jahneke