WASHINGTON — Sen. Tammy Duckworth, D-Ill., is asking this question in a video she made Thursday and posted on multiple social platforms: “Did you see Roll Call’s ableist cartoon yesterday?”
Well, you likely did not see it last week because Roll Call is a publication specializing in covering Capitol Hill. But Duckworth, the leading voice in Congress for the disabled, sure did. And she didn’t like it.
Duckworth says in the video, with the cartoon behind her, “Ableist cartoons like this perpetuate harmful stereotypes of what Americans with disabilities can and can’t do. And it has to stop. Our daily experience has no business being the punchline for any joke.”
The cartoonist drew a wheelchair user on a chairlift ramp going up the Senate-side Capitol steps with three people using walkers.
The caption says there were a “few upgrades at the Capitol during the recess, senator.” Above the columns were the words, “Senate Assisted Legislating Facility.”
The reference is about the aging Senate, a matter in the news because of health issues surrounding Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the California Democrat who is 90, and Senate Republican Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky who is 81.
Age and the ability to serve is also part of the presidential campaign. President Joe Biden will be 81 on Nov. 20. Former President Donald Trump is 77.
You may not be familiar with the term ableism.
Chicago-based Access Living defines ableism as “the discrimination of and social prejudice against people with disabilities based on the belief that typical abilities are superior. At its heart, ableism is rooted in the assumption that disabled people require ‘fixing’ and defines people by their disability.”
Duckworth’s activism and legislative initiatives on the disability front are informed by her own life. She is a retired lieutenant colonel who served 23 years in the Illinois Army National Guard. Duckworth lost her legs and shattered her right arm when her Black Hawk helicopter was shot down in Iraq on Nov. 12, 2004.
She often uses a wheelchair. That means she experiences accessibility issues others are blind to.
As the nation in July was marking the 33rd anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act, Duckworth took her two daughters, ages 5 and 8, to see the “Barbie” movie. The senator was stuck outside the theater while her kids went in because the elevator did not work.
Duckworth, in calling the Roll Call cartoon offensive and “really troubling” said, “In some poor attempt to comment on the age of some senators, this cartoon inherently is ageist and ableist.”
“This cartoon uses my condition, my everyday life, as someone who can’t walk up stairs, as someone who uses a stair lift every single day as a way to insult United States senators.
“Just because you use a mobility device does not mean that you’re unfit to serve,” she wrote.
“And it’s not just mocking me, but the entire disability community, including the many Capitol Hill staffers with disabilities, who face too many obstacles every day just trying to do their jobs and helping the American people.”
I asked Roll Call editor Jason Dick to respond, and he said in an email, “I understand people are offended by the cartoon, and I hear them.
“Our cartoonist was not trying to make any kind of statement about the disabled community or senior citizens, nor to insult them or the work they do. He sought to address an uncomfortable issue: Some powerful members of Congress do not always share important information about their health and what that means for the decisions they make that affect us all,” Dick said.
“…We will always seek to be a better publication, and we understand and have more empathy as a result of conversations we have had since we published this cartoon.”
When it comes to transparency about sharing health information, Duckworth set the gold standard when she first ran for the Senate in 2016 against then-Sen. Mark Kirk, R-Ill.
Duckworth’s campaign gave me 215 pages of her medical records covering her health from the day she was shot down to the cesarean-section birth of her first daughter in 2014, to her most recent physical.
Did you see Roll Call's ableist cartoon yesterday?
— Tammy Duckworth (@SenDuckworth) September 8, 2023
The daily experience of Americans with disabilities has no business being the punchline in any joke. pic.twitter.com/iFRZK1xcFA
Kirk suffered a stroke to the right brain on Jan. 21, 2012, which kept him out of the Capitol almost a full year.
Kirk made a triumphant return to the Senate in January 2013. He slowly climbed the 45 steps to the Senate chamber — the steps featured in the mocking cartoon — braced by two Democrats — his pal, Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and then Vice President Biden.
Age and its impact on the ability of a candidate to carry out a job is one thing. Duckworth’s lesson here is that blatant ableism is another.
