A few days ago, John Guardiano wrote an excellent tribute to Charles Krauthammer to mark his 25th anniversary as a columnist at The Washington Post. I have a somewhat different perspective on Krauthammer. I first encountered Krauthammer through his essays in The New Republic. Those were the pre-Internet days, and one couldn’t easily read out of town newspapers. I was attracted to Krauthammer only in part because of our interest in similar subjects. A Krauthammer essay or article always stands out. Somewhere within the piece there’s always a pithy and linguistically elegant comment that makes you wonder why you haven’t looked at an issue in the way that he has. Also, Krauthammer is a true Renaissance Man. He has studied every subject that he writes about intensively. No other columnist brings to his work as much knowledge of history, economics, as well as other social and natural sciences. This enables him to place events in the news in their proper context. Readers of Krauthammer’s columns always learn something that they did not know beforehand. As an aspiring journalist, I have consciously tried to emulate him, since for me journalism is essentially a form of education.
Sometime after I had become a Krauthammer admirer, I found out that Krauthammer and I had both had a significant physical disability. Our respective disabilities are very different from each other. Krauthammer broke his back in a swimming accident after his first year of studies at the Harvard medical school. He has quadriplegia and uses a wheelchair. I’ve had cerebral palsy since birth, and this impairs my gait, speech, and the use of my hands. Still, I identified closely with Krauthammer. Here was someone with a serious physical disability that had made it in a very competitive profession in the “real world”. People with disabilities, who were born in the 1950s and 1960s, just didn’t have many such role models.
Through arrangements made by some common friends, I got the opportunity to spend some time with Krauthammer on a visit to Washington. We connected immediately. He was the first person whom I’d ever met who understood my need to transcend my disability, or to have an identity that was separate from my disability. I not only wanted to emulate his writing; I wanted to emulate his approach to life.
My admiration for Krauthammer increased even more when sometime later I interviewed him for a radio program on disability carried by the University of Toronto’s radio station. The interview made such a lasting impression on me that I still remember almost every detail of it, more than twenty years after it was recorded.
Krauthammer’s story is inspiring. After he was injured, he was admitted to the same hospital at which he was studying to become a doctor. He took advantage of this to continue his studies while he was still a patient. His professors came to his room so that he could keep up with lectures. He took his whole second year while he was flat on his back. He returned to his regular class in his third year and graduated with the same students with whom he entered medical school, in spite of his injury.
For Krauthammer, the key to living with disability was what he calls “denial”. That means living life with a disability, as if you didn’t have one. Krauthammer told me that he didn’t let his disability affect what he wanted to do with life. His interview with me was the first in which he talked extensively about his disability in public. As far as I know he hasn’t done another. Krauthammer doesn’t like profiles that portray him as being heroic. This portrayal is fundamentally distorted. Successful persons with disabilities are not heroes. Like all of us, they are merely trying to do the best with the cards that life has dealt them.
But more importantly, raising people with disabilities on a pedestal is patronizing. It is evidence of the failure to take persons with disabilities seriously. The most recent issue of the University of Toronto’s magazine contains an article profiling a blind sociology professor, Rod Michalko, who has been hired to develop four “disability studies” courses. In the article, he claims that he is opposed to “our culture’s deep desire to get rid of disability, to either cure it or even rehab it”. Michalko also says, “Being blind or being in a wheelchair gives a certain perspective on the world that’s valuable. I say that my blindness is not a condition; it’s part of who I am.” This is identity politics taken to absurdity. Would anybody really choose not to walk or see if they had the opportunity to do so? A non-disabled person would be ridiculed for making this argument, but somebody with a disability gets a professorship at a distinguished university.
As a person with a severe disability, Krauthammer’s greatest triumph may be his success in escaping such patronizing. For those engaging him on debate on the set of Fox News or commenting on something that he has written, Krauthammer’s wheelchair is irrelevant. Of course, Krauthammer deserves much of the credit for this triumph. It is ultimately the excellence of his work that has enabled him to transcend his disability. But, I suspect, even Krauthammer would admit that he has been lucky. Ending up in the hospital in which he was studying was extremely fortunate for him, as he acknowledged in the radio interview. I used to think that acquiring a disability in mid-life was more difficult than having one from birth. After all, people who were born with their disability have no memory of living without disability. They, therefore, never have to deal with the sense of loss that must accompany the permanent loss of function in some of their body. Yet, perhaps people injured in mid-life carry over with them a drive to succeed and be independent, that, through low expectations, society has robbed from many who have had their disability from a young age.
The profile of Michalko claims that he is trying to “eradicate prejudices associated with being disabled”. Doubtlessly such prejudices still exist. But they are more likely to be eliminated if people follow Krauthammer’s example. There is nothing wrong with saying that there is nothing good or virtuous about having a disability and that it is better to live life without disability. Yet having disability need not be a barrier to accomplishment. The stigma associated with disability won’t disappear until society becomes accustomed to seeing many people like Krauthammer, pursuing excellence, in all fields of human endeavor.
10 responses so far
1 mlindroo // Jan 10, 2010 at 7:24 am
> For Krauthammer, the key to living with disability was what he calls “denial”.
One might argue that Krauthammer the columnist reacts that way when it comes to living with the disastrous failures of neoconservatism in 2001- ~2005 too. No regrets or remorse, it seems.
—
Look — Krauthammer’s life story is an admirable one, as is his intellect. But during the past decade he has also been an ardent proponent of a foreign policy ideology that has proved disastrous to the United States in general and the Republican party in particular. His intelligence and eloquence cannot obscure this simple fact.
MARCU$
2 sinz54 // Jan 10, 2010 at 9:04 am
Mr. Krossel:
Yep, I’ve been through that nonsense with my own disabling illness.
The politically correct way to talk about it is that:
– It’s been a learning experience, an opportunity for personal growth
– It’s a signal that you need to reorient your life
– And rediscover the things that make live truly worth living.
To which I say:
POPPYCOCK!
It’s more like slow death. You mourn the loss of all the things you can no longer do; you shake your head sadly at all the new things you must do (and all the time they take up) in order to stay alive.
Barbara Ehrenreich had a column on this just a few days ago, in connection with breast cancer. She also ridiculed the PC doctrine that breast cancer presents opportunities and teaching moments–and even worse, that you’re supposed to think that you can make your cancer better with such positive thinking.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/jan/10/smile-or-die-barbara-ehrenreich
3 JeninCT // Jan 10, 2010 at 10:06 am
I’ve been a huge fan of Krauthammer for many years, and only recently found out he is disabled. How would I know when his disability is pretty much invisible to those who read his column or see him seated at a table?
Krauthammer is brilliant. I think you’ve chosen a wonderful role model. And I agree Sinz, it’s awful when illness or injury strikes, and the pollyanna notion that you can think yourself well is nonsense.
4 rbottoms // Jan 10, 2010 at 11:30 am
I sorry, which party was for the Americans with Disabilities Act again? You know the people who made cities install curb ramps, accommodations in educational institutions, and all the other amenities that didn’t exist twenty years ago that Charles and other disabled people use?
I think it starts with a ‘D’. And I am pretty sure the other party has spent that same twenty years or so ridiculing the ADA just as well.
5 cheves222 // Jan 10, 2010 at 2:24 pm
Great piece, and thank you very much for sharing your personal story.
6 Willems // Jan 10, 2010 at 3:27 pm
I like this story. Particularly the honesty regarding the nature of disabilities. Such honesty is only achieved if one can see a purpose to life that trancends the self. I did not know this about Krauthammer.
I study political science in Europe. We read a Krauthammer article which I quite liked. In class, to my surprise, the article was thoroughly mocked and the instructor said it was included just show there were “people out there who actually think this way.” Not much intellectual curiosity. Quite embarrassing. Europe itself is like the professossor defending blindness as normal.
7 oldgal // Jan 10, 2010 at 11:41 pm
A friend of mine who not only has achieved incredible personal success, but has also been instrumental in helping many others with disabilities achieve success is Neil Jacobson. You might be interested in reading up on his current endeavors plus his past accomplishments: http://www.abilicorp.com/the-team/
The prejudices disappear when people work together and get to know each other.
8 Lilia // Jan 11, 2010 at 9:06 am
reply to rbottoms
The Americans with Disabilities Act was truly a bipartisan piece of legislation. The sponsor was Tom Harkin, a Democrat, but there were 9 Democrat and 9 Republican cosponsors to the bill. Admittedly, 8 Republicans voted against the bill, but 11 Democrats and 5 Republicans did not vote (the bill must not have impressed them very much). The bill was signed into law by (shock) George H.W. Bush (a Republican). It would appear to me that when everyone works together for the good of this nation, everyone wins. You have to have the give and take for it to work. Neither party is always right or always wrong. Everyone has good ideas and we need to work together to get all the good ideas in all legislation our elected officials pass. The USA is a large country with many personal views and ideas, thus the reason we must compromise on many things. One size does not fit all. No one will get everything they want, but hopefully, with hard work, they can get what they need.
9 nwahs // Jan 11, 2010 at 10:29 pm
Good aricle.
“For Krauthammer, the key to living with disability was what he calls “denial”. That means living life with a disability, as if you didn’t have one.”
I was born in the 50’s with CP myself and was mainstreamed as a child. All that means is I was one of the first kids with a disability that got to go tho a regular school and socialize with regular kids. I saw myself exactly like them. I knew I wasn’t particularly good at sports, but I just wrote that off as being a nerd. I was in complete denial of my differences. I dated and struck out, but I never saw myself as being different.
Reality hit when I got older and, because of various endeavors, began appearing on TV. It was like an out of body experience. “That’s me????” Denial is not all its cracked up to be
I’m in my 50’s now and I have accepted myself. But it was a journey, and I commend you for yours. I know it was no bed of roses! 
10 srichardson // Jan 16, 2010 at 1:52 pm
rbottoms,
While it’s true that people with disabilities tend to get more support from the Democratic Party, there is some overlap between conservative philosophy and dis rights and a lot of ways in which liberals have failed on dis rights. These are two good articles about that:
http://www.thenewatlantis.com/publications/disability-politics
http://www.raggededgemagazine.com/focus/liberals0104.html
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