You seem to be missing the point accymel. My objections to the hurtful posts are first because they are totally uncalled for and secondly they are made behind the victim’s back and not because it just happened to be at Heather Mills.
I was unaware that you had a son who is not as able bodied as most people but what makes it all the more amazing is that you of all people joined in poking fun at Heather’s disability.
It isn’t very clear from your post but I gather that your son is still young and probably doesn’t understand the hurt that a nasty jibe can cause. You, like a responsible parent, have normalised his life as best you can. Hopefully his condition can be corrected and one day he will be able to run and jump with the best of them and thus his ‘disability’ will disappear. Heather does not have that option.
I wasn’t going to mention this but you have forced my hand so to speak. Neither does my 33 years old son when at the age of three he accidentally stuck a needle in his right eye. Even though he was rushed to hospital and operated on within a couple of hours the loss of eyeball fluid was too great to save the sight in that eye. Having the needle pierce the retina didn’t help either. Slowly over the next few years the sight deteriorated until he went blind in that eye.
In spite of mine and his mother’s best efforts he still came home from school heartbroken after kids called him Cyclops and wandered around the school yard with one hand over one eye and bumped into each other. He couldn’t play cricket or football or any other games where judging distance was crucial to the game. With just monocular vision he had no depth perception and did bump into things until he learned over many years to judge distances in other ways. Today he makes light of his disability and won’t even register as partially sighted. But the truth of the matter is that if anything approached from his right he wouldn’t know until it was too late unless his other senses warned him of danger.
The para-olympians are to be applauded but they are the exception rather than the rule. Alternatively the self pitying whiners who play on their disability and there are plenty of them, are to be pitied. Yet even they do not deserve to be mocked for their disability.
I have seen grown people reduced to tears because of some crass comment by an unthinking and insensitive remark made by an able bodied person.
Some of the disabled people that I know are sensitive about their situation but they don’t show it. Equally they don’t like to be patronised either and that is almost as bad as being made fun of.
I feel strongly about this issue because I think that it is cruel and unkind to poke fun at a person because they are disabled. I can see nothing wrong in that outlook.
I have no intention of contacting HM to point her to this thread but what about all those who claim she wouldn’t be bothered by the abuse? Prove it by contacting her and inviting her to read what some people have been saying about her behind her back. Or post an unconditional apology.