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Fox could be heading to Sarah Palin's doghouse after the animated show "Family Guy" appeared to mock her son's Down syndrome on Feb. 14.
In the taste-challenged episode, one of the show's characters dates a woman who apparently suffers from Down syndrome. The woman makes comparisons to Palin's 22-month-old son, Trig.
"My dad's an accountant, and my mom's the former governor of Alaska," the mentally disabled character said, without mentioning any names.
The irreverent cartoon stepped over the line just days after Palin lambasted both White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and radio talkmeister Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard," which she considers an unacceptable slur.
There was no immediate comment from Palin, who recently became a Fox News contributor.
The former Republican Vice Presidential candidate demanded that Emanuel be fired for using the r-word to describe liberal activists in a closed-door meeting last summer.
She also called Limbaugh "disrespectful" for using the word during his program.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The NY Daily News:
