Steve Newton over at Outside the Machine asked all Delaware bloggers for help, and I am happy to oblige. A general lack of empathy exists in our society (generally more so on side of the aisle, but I digress), and there are times when those with empathy have to slap unsympathetic assholes back.
Yesterday the Wall Street Journal published another article on Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (cached, ungated version here; hit “Join the Discussion” not “Comments” to read the comments). Many of you know that my son Michael suffers from this disease. I have worked with the author of this article at the WSJ before, and I am sad to say that no good deed goes unpunished.
Why? Because the author asked me to help her contact another family with a child suffering from CFS, and I did. Tina Gustavsson is a fifteen-year-old who lives about two miles across the DE/PA border. She has a much worse case of CFS than Michael, and has had unending struggles with the Kennett Square School District to get fair treatment. The Gustavssons belong to a small, informal group of CFS suffering children/families that has been organized for mutual support in PA/DE/NY/MD.
Unfortunately, not only did Amy Marcus write the article so that Tina could be viewed as a lazy teenager whose family was trying to bilk an entirely reasonable school district, but the whacko commenters came out in force. I won’t quote them because I am not willing to give them the space.
I’m OK with the people who realize CFS is a disease, and want to discuss the extent to which our society should pay out of the public purse to educate/treat the victims.
I can even deal with the ideologues (including, sadly, some physicians) who think the disease is fictitious despite literally thousands of articles now extant dealing with the physiological symptoms.
What I cannot abide (and I am going to use a technical term here) is the ASSHOLES who chose instead to comment at the WSJ attacking Tina as a lazy teenager who just needs a kick in the butt, or her family as societal leeches who are trying to game the system. If you go through and read the comments, some of them even got down to being snide about the fact that she didn’t look sick in the photo that the WSJ published, and that’s how they knew it was all a scam.
I was very proud of Tina’s big sister Natalie for heading right into the comment section and defending her sister tooth and claw, although all of us in blogdom could have told her that it was pretty pointless by the time a feeding frenzy of idiots gets started.
The Gutavssons have, simply, been raped as a family by the WSJ and its commenters, and I’d like to let them know that there are people in the area who just don’t think that’s right.
So here’s what I’m asking of all of you–jason, Hube, von cracker, anonone, everyone who stops by…
1. Publish a post on your blog that essentially says, “We stand with Tina”–that 15 year-old girls with disabilities shouldn’t be fair game for the crazies (or just link to this post if you’d like).
2. Take the time to visit the WSJ and read through the comments (they get really REALLY vile around page 7) and leave a reaction.
Maybe I’m not the best person to be asking this of everyone, but there has to be a line somewhere, and attacking sick children who live in our own backyard has to be over that line.
PS–Michael is doing well this year, for those of you who have followed his progress. We’re trying some new palliative therapies. Oh, and for those idiots who think this is a large-scale scam, there are only four diagnosed cases of Adolescent Chronic Fatigue in Delaware, and less than 100 in PA.