Diabetic Blindness is Not Funny, Mr. Stewart!

[kielmeyer]

On the August 6th Daily Show with Jon Stewart, Stewart thought it 'funny' to make a 'joke' about diabetic blindness. In response to favourable comments by some U.S. Senators about Sotomayor's struggles with type 1 diabetes, he remarked that if being diabetic was going to be a new criterion for selecting Supreme Court Justices, then soon "justice would truly be blind." I wonder if he even stopped for half a second to consider whether some young people with type 1 diabetes watching his show may not have been aware of their heightened risk for blindness until they were informed of it by his 'joke.'

Fortunately in Canada we have the Human Rights Acts which allow us to bring a complaint against anyone using our public media to draw any vulnerable minority into contempt by any comments made. I think we should all join in a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission against the outrageous notion that diabetic blindness is something to make fun of. Did Mr. Stewart consider how spreading the impression that all diabetics will inevitably go blind will promote employment discrimination against diabetics?

I think in the name of diabetic solidarity that we should flood with complaints the Daily Show forum, the Daily Show telephone exchange, and all the Canadian networks spreading his discrimination against diabetics by carrying his program.