Having re-tweeted Jessica Benham, who is set to become an excellent addition to the Pennsylvania state House, I have to address that video that Ted Lieu put out today.

Watching that video hurt, not just because I thought better of Lieu but because of the response it got.

That video was not masterful trolling. That video wasn’t excellent political humor, that video was cheap ableism coarsening our political discourse.

Being able to drink from a glass one handed is not a qualification for anything or a special skill.

Not being able to drink from a glass one-handed is not a disqualification from anything, or necessarily an indication of something that should be of concern to the public, the worst case scenario armchair diagnoses flying around social media from (unethical) doctors.

And yes, it is unethical for a doctor, of any specialty, to attempt to diagnose a person who has not engaged their professional services and especially not from watching a video.

With everything that has happened in this nation since 2017, really since 2015 when that set a creature row down his daddy gold plated escalator and started screaming racist garbage by way of introducing his candidacy, that we still cannot do better than mocking his body...

That you all continue to take this lazy, sloppy, BIGOTED course of commenting on his mobility, his size, his posture, his hands and his need to use both to drink, and that you think it’s FUNNY?

It says that you are not trustworthy. It says that you see bodies like mine – bodies that are large, bodies that are stooped, bodies that cannot move like yours, bodies that cannot lift things, bodies that do not bend like yours — as inherently inferior and laughable.

It tells me that the ableism that is pervasive in this country (a component of white supremacy, BTW) is as baked into leftist discourse as it is anywhere, and you don’t even see it, and you aren’t even trying to do better.

Even though we’ve been talking about this now for YEARS.

I don’t trust you. I don’t want to be in community with you. I hold no alliance with you, because you have broken trust. You have made me unwelcome in community with you. You have said I don’t belong, not directly but by your repulsive expressed attitudes.

I need you all to do much much better. I need you all to sit and think about yourselves. I need you to think about your future and what you were going to do when is your parent who can’t lift a glass. When it’s you that is hesitant on a flight of stairs or a steep ramp.

But more importantly, I need you to think about all the people around you will see the things that you say about him and know that you think the exact same things about them, about ME, whether you would admit it or not.

I need you all to do so so much better.

I am so exhausted. I am so ashamed of you. I am so let down by you.

I would say that you should know better, but apparently you were never taught.

Now you’ve been taught.

Do better.

There are a lot of speech to text errors in this thread, but I don’t care at this point. I think my point was made.

(I use speech to text because, like Donald Trump, my hands don’t work the way that I would like them to.)