I don’t have an organized hypothesis yet, but I can contribute a couple of items: Ken Klippenstein received a decent amount of money from USAID via the Intercept before leaving the Intercept to go independent.
Klippenstein said his editor at the Intercept was fired for approving his stories, my source at the Intercept says his editor was fired for harassment.
Amazing. I was right there with you on Klippenstein’s cruel portrayal of disabilities which have no bearing on competence, when you made the claim that young members of Congress show no sign of leading a progressive revolt BECAUSE THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL.
So, it’s progressive to hate on Jews and to work to recreate the pre-WW II conditions which left the entire Jewish diaspora to live at the whims of whichever country we were currently guests in since our exile from Israel/Egypt and everywhere in-between? But, hating on disabilities is a bridge too far for you?
Lay off the Kremlin propaganda about Middle East peace. You are hurting your actual cause, assuming it’s ableism/accessibility.
Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism. Israel is a state and that state’s leadership is committing bald-faced genocide. No one should support Israel. Conflating that position with anti-semitism is where the real harm gets done.
Excellent piece. I may be wrong, but it certainly seems like there's a trend among people who hold tankie, or near tankie, beliefs where they fetishize strength and power, or more importantly disparage perceived weaknesses, as long as doing so is in opposition to the current power structures which they oppose. This results in a perverse type of ableism that I'm sure they believe is only focused against the people they oppose ideologically. The problem with that, as I think you make clear in this piece, is that that isn't how ableism works.
lots of people think people who cannot physically fight are not going to be beneficial for the revolution. it's as absurd as saying stephen hawking didn't do anything for science because he had ALS/was in a wheelchair.
they don't like to be reminded that harriett tubman had seizures and still got done all the shit she did... because the people she helped accommodated for her. certainly not seeing that behavior out of people who can't even put on a mask in public.
Thank you for this article. Like you, I have liked a lot of what Klippenstein puts out , but have been disturbed by his constant attacks on people just because of their age. You articulate much better than I. With regard to Mitch McConnell in particular- he had polio as a child. Polio symptoms can re appear when people get old. That is probably what is happening to McConnell. I am no fan of his politics, but what does McConnell’s physical disability have to do with cognition. I am all for exposing the truth and questioning the benefit to society of having people serve in elected positions for 30, 40, 50 years ( have a discussion about term limits), and if they are experiencing a decline that impacts their ability to serve their constituents, by all means let us know. But physical disabilities don’t fall into that category, and these politicians did win elections after all.
These people are ancient and shouldn’t be in power anymore. Period. Thats the whole argument. People who have consistently poor decisions for decades do not deserve to make decisions that will impact the next 2-3 generations, especially when some of them can be found living in long-term disability care and have brains that aren’t capable of functioning properly anymore. Funny how you never talk about staffers basically committing elder abuse, by keeping these people in demanding public jobs so they can keep their nice gig on capital hill
If you actually care about people afflicted with these illnesses, this is the least productive way to help them and stupidest hill to die on. In fact, your method of approach here suspiciously only helps you gain clout and does nothing for the people you pretend to be speaking out for
So because you are disabled whatever you say about disable people comes from a place of care? I don't think it works like that. Everyone makes mistakes.
Both can be true: Ken's treatment of the elderly in the congress can be harsh, unnecessarily, while remaining a good point about the gerontocracy.
I don't think saying it's ableism is correct because those people are the top of the nation's deciders ... I think we can have higher standards than being alive. We're not talking about widespread ableism here, we're talking about legitimate questions as to the capacity of our leaders to exercise said leader because they are dying in front of our eyes.
We all have had elderly in our family and we all saw them decline ... I don't think we would advocate for them to be able to have a job as they are dying let alone one of the highest position in the land.
That's the whole point about retirement by the way: being able to age gracefully without having to work.
I have a disability. But thanks for playing! Yes, I want people who are ABLE to do the job in the office.
Ableism is the dumbest of all woke bullshit. If you can't do something then you can't do it. Simple as that.
That's why Maxine Waters who is close to 90 simply took no for an answer when they told her she's not allowed in government offices to investigate what's going on. Because of weakness.
So either you start supporitng STRONG people or Republicans will put in strong people for you.
"These people are ancient and shouldn’t be in power anymore. Period. Thats the whole argument."
That - numerical age alone should preclude public office - would also be a terrible argument, though your own succeeding sentences show you don't even believe that.
Amazing how many pretzels you have to tie yourself into to make this argument that “it’s actually a good thing that chiefs of staff are using senile congresspeople as puppets.”
It’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that Representative Connolly (you might want to correct your piece which calls him a senator) might survive this. If he’s starting chemotherapy then it’s metastasized already. Metastatic esophageal cancer is basically a death sentence and has a 6% 5 year survival rate.
Glad you’re admitting you lied about the facts in your quest to be a scold.
I also think it’s hilarious that your central thesis is cognitively dissonant. You insist that a Congress full of the disabled would advocate more money for the disabled while admitting that Sanders is fighting for that and the ghoulish McConnell is doing the opposite.
Speech slowing down and halting in the elderly is a sign of cognitive decline. Someone who is in cognitive decline should not be making our laws. If they have a different, undisclosed underlying condition then it’s fine but your argument is that you shouldn’t point out the obvious ones for fear that you might accidentally criticize someone with Parkinson’s.
The point is that having tremors and cancer doesn't equate to cognitive decline. That point wasn't made overtly enough but the problem with Ken's rhetoric is that it equates physical disabilities with cognitive disabilities, which is an overgeneralization. Remember Stephen Hawking's body was damaged but his cognitive abilities were not. These processes are separate but Ken is making the point that ill people are too stupid to be trusted with decisions. He should instead make his point about these politicians without falsely equating non-cognitive disabilities with cognitive fitness.
The research wasn't poor; you refused to see the point.
I've also been noticing this recently! I'm a newer subscriber and have had to mostly stop reading him. I don't think I've seen anyone mention this but when the Luigi case first started picking up his Substack chats were FILLED with people calling him Jesus and asking for more people to continue his work. Dude straight up has no moderation there and it's disgusting. I'd like to see more people calling out his hippocratic behavior. Thank you for a delightful and enlightening article!
I think it’s pretty cut and dry that physical fitness should have nothing to do with criticisms of government officials, outside of if that fitness prevents them from showing up. (Even in that case, obviously we’d prefer to have telecommute/other infrastructural options for our leaders.)
When there is a cover up of the cognitive decline of someone like our President though, how do you approach that conversation tactfully? It seems like there can be space for discussion of the actual disability without stigmatization, but what does that look like? Asking genuinely, as I’m not sure.
I tried to answer this here and in the FAIR piece I wrote linked to this piece. I think if it becomes clear that someone’s cognitive abilities make them unable to perform the job, it can be addressed. What has to be avoided is diagnosing people (the behavior is enough), stigmatizing language (he’s a vegetable etc), or any kind of demonizing of illness and disability.
That makes a lot of sense. I wasn't really able to articulate what it was about Ken's articles and content that was turning me off, but it really does reek of a lack of consideration. And looking at your FAIR article and the CDR guidelines has me considering that most of these stories that are "about" disability aren't actually about disability at all and are just using it as a blunt weapon.
That’s a good way to put it. I think Ken and others don’t have the skill or patience to make the smart arguments about the gerontocracy, but they get attention by spreading hate
By no means should age or physical disability be used to discriminate. But the problem with politicians and other powerful individuals in our society is that their older than average age simply reflects the chronological implications of plutocracy (ie, a plutocracy is also necessarily a gerontocracy).
Think about it: a society where money rules all our affairs above all else is also one where the best connected people with the longest Rolodex of rich friends have an inordinate advantage over others, regardless of ability (or lack thereof). And it takes a long time to build up that Rolodex, so the older you are, the bigger your likely advantage in that department.
I don't think the only point against Connolly, besides being old, is merely a blind prejudice against cancer patients. Connolly opened himself up to intense ridicule for being "Congressman Make-a-wish" after his remarks defending himself (he thought) when he rebuked more junior challengers to his run for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee by saying that, after all, he's never had his chance to chair his own committee. A lot of us mere mortals, whether cancer survivors or not, were thinking, "gee, maybe your higher priority should be to, number one, focus on your own health, and, number two, make sure that the most capable possible candidate takes on the role of leading opposition to an ongoing far right coup d'état".
Yes, if AOC had cancer and looked, adjusted for age, as close to death's door as he does, I'd advise her to put her own ambitions behind both the public good and her own recovery. (Of course, it's still not an apples-to-apples to comparison, seeing as how Connolly was the author of "pay-go". Otherwise, we'd also have to hypothesize a parallel universe in which Connolly was a progressive champion, as opposed to a bourgeois "moderate" reactionary.)
I hope he's NOT at death's door, to be clear. But certainly in any case he should be spending his waning years with his loved ones, instead of wreaking more havoc on working class people with his vicious reactionary policies.
Appreciate this article so much. Ken’s had some interesting articles in the past but the ableism has been through the roof in the past few months and it’s just so discouraging to see. There is no justice without disability justice, and “resisting facism” is a moot point if you replicate the same toxic shit elsewhere
I don’t have an organized hypothesis yet, but I can contribute a couple of items: Ken Klippenstein received a decent amount of money from USAID via the Intercept before leaving the Intercept to go independent.
Klippenstein said his editor at the Intercept was fired for approving his stories, my source at the Intercept says his editor was fired for harassment.
Well, what you do have is trash
Amazing. I was right there with you on Klippenstein’s cruel portrayal of disabilities which have no bearing on competence, when you made the claim that young members of Congress show no sign of leading a progressive revolt BECAUSE THEIR SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL.
So, it’s progressive to hate on Jews and to work to recreate the pre-WW II conditions which left the entire Jewish diaspora to live at the whims of whichever country we were currently guests in since our exile from Israel/Egypt and everywhere in-between? But, hating on disabilities is a bridge too far for you?
Lay off the Kremlin propaganda about Middle East peace. You are hurting your actual cause, assuming it’s ableism/accessibility.
Anti-Zionism is not anti-semitism. Israel is a state and that state’s leadership is committing bald-faced genocide. No one should support Israel. Conflating that position with anti-semitism is where the real harm gets done.
Ken is an asshole
Excellent piece. I may be wrong, but it certainly seems like there's a trend among people who hold tankie, or near tankie, beliefs where they fetishize strength and power, or more importantly disparage perceived weaknesses, as long as doing so is in opposition to the current power structures which they oppose. This results in a perverse type of ableism that I'm sure they believe is only focused against the people they oppose ideologically. The problem with that, as I think you make clear in this piece, is that that isn't how ableism works.
lots of people think people who cannot physically fight are not going to be beneficial for the revolution. it's as absurd as saying stephen hawking didn't do anything for science because he had ALS/was in a wheelchair.
they don't like to be reminded that harriett tubman had seizures and still got done all the shit she did... because the people she helped accommodated for her. certainly not seeing that behavior out of people who can't even put on a mask in public.
KKKen has been a giant dick lick for a while now.
i find him continuously offensive and im not sure when was the last time he was anyone’s hero.
Thank you for this article. Like you, I have liked a lot of what Klippenstein puts out , but have been disturbed by his constant attacks on people just because of their age. You articulate much better than I. With regard to Mitch McConnell in particular- he had polio as a child. Polio symptoms can re appear when people get old. That is probably what is happening to McConnell. I am no fan of his politics, but what does McConnell’s physical disability have to do with cognition. I am all for exposing the truth and questioning the benefit to society of having people serve in elected positions for 30, 40, 50 years ( have a discussion about term limits), and if they are experiencing a decline that impacts their ability to serve their constituents, by all means let us know. But physical disabilities don’t fall into that category, and these politicians did win elections after all.
I think it’s the audience capture.
These people are ancient and shouldn’t be in power anymore. Period. Thats the whole argument. People who have consistently poor decisions for decades do not deserve to make decisions that will impact the next 2-3 generations, especially when some of them can be found living in long-term disability care and have brains that aren’t capable of functioning properly anymore. Funny how you never talk about staffers basically committing elder abuse, by keeping these people in demanding public jobs so they can keep their nice gig on capital hill
If that’s the argument you can leave Parkinson’s, cancer, etc out of it. But clearly disability is the problem for you!
If you actually care about people afflicted with these illnesses, this is the least productive way to help them and stupidest hill to die on. In fact, your method of approach here suspiciously only helps you gain clout and does nothing for the people you pretend to be speaking out for
I am disabled
How does that change my point
I care about disabled people.
So because you are disabled whatever you say about disable people comes from a place of care? I don't think it works like that. Everyone makes mistakes.
Both can be true: Ken's treatment of the elderly in the congress can be harsh, unnecessarily, while remaining a good point about the gerontocracy.
I don't think saying it's ableism is correct because those people are the top of the nation's deciders ... I think we can have higher standards than being alive. We're not talking about widespread ableism here, we're talking about legitimate questions as to the capacity of our leaders to exercise said leader because they are dying in front of our eyes.
We all have had elderly in our family and we all saw them decline ... I don't think we would advocate for them to be able to have a job as they are dying let alone one of the highest position in the land.
That's the whole point about retirement by the way: being able to age gracefully without having to work.
Yes, you're a bad person if you advocate someone who is unABLE to perform an essential function.
Seriously, your position here is evil.
How does cancer or Parkinson’s make one unable to be a congress member
Because we don't need neurodegenerative diseases representing us. And it really depends on the Cancer.
Yikes. Well at least thanks for laying out your ableism so clearly.
We don’t agree. I’d like more neurological diseases in power
I have a disability. But thanks for playing! Yes, I want people who are ABLE to do the job in the office.
Ableism is the dumbest of all woke bullshit. If you can't do something then you can't do it. Simple as that.
That's why Maxine Waters who is close to 90 simply took no for an answer when they told her she's not allowed in government offices to investigate what's going on. Because of weakness.
So either you start supporitng STRONG people or Republicans will put in strong people for you.
"These people are ancient and shouldn’t be in power anymore. Period. Thats the whole argument."
That - numerical age alone should preclude public office - would also be a terrible argument, though your own succeeding sentences show you don't even believe that.
Amazing how many pretzels you have to tie yourself into to make this argument that “it’s actually a good thing that chiefs of staff are using senile congresspeople as puppets.”
It’s incredibly disingenuous to suggest that Representative Connolly (you might want to correct your piece which calls him a senator) might survive this. If he’s starting chemotherapy then it’s metastasized already. Metastatic esophageal cancer is basically a death sentence and has a 6% 5 year survival rate.
Overall a very poorly researched article.
Well I actually said the opposite of what you’re claiming!!
So you didn’t refer to him as Senator and didn’t misrepresent his prognosis with personal anecdotes?
I said the opposite of what you claim I think is a “good thing”!!
Glad you’re admitting you lied about the facts in your quest to be a scold.
I also think it’s hilarious that your central thesis is cognitively dissonant. You insist that a Congress full of the disabled would advocate more money for the disabled while admitting that Sanders is fighting for that and the ghoulish McConnell is doing the opposite.
Speech slowing down and halting in the elderly is a sign of cognitive decline. Someone who is in cognitive decline should not be making our laws. If they have a different, undisclosed underlying condition then it’s fine but your argument is that you shouldn’t point out the obvious ones for fear that you might accidentally criticize someone with Parkinson’s.
Sanders is disabled
1. Incredible that you aren’t engaging with the facts that I’ve pointed out you lied about.
2. Bernie Sanders is not disabled.
The point is that having tremors and cancer doesn't equate to cognitive decline. That point wasn't made overtly enough but the problem with Ken's rhetoric is that it equates physical disabilities with cognitive disabilities, which is an overgeneralization. Remember Stephen Hawking's body was damaged but his cognitive abilities were not. These processes are separate but Ken is making the point that ill people are too stupid to be trusted with decisions. He should instead make his point about these politicians without falsely equating non-cognitive disabilities with cognitive fitness.
The research wasn't poor; you refused to see the point.
Yes. Thank you. Dude REALLY hates the elderly.
I've also been noticing this recently! I'm a newer subscriber and have had to mostly stop reading him. I don't think I've seen anyone mention this but when the Luigi case first started picking up his Substack chats were FILLED with people calling him Jesus and asking for more people to continue his work. Dude straight up has no moderation there and it's disgusting. I'd like to see more people calling out his hippocratic behavior. Thank you for a delightful and enlightening article!
Weird hatchet job here. And your deflections in response to people’s valid points are huge 🚩🚩.
Deflecting from what? Red flag signaling what?
I think it’s pretty cut and dry that physical fitness should have nothing to do with criticisms of government officials, outside of if that fitness prevents them from showing up. (Even in that case, obviously we’d prefer to have telecommute/other infrastructural options for our leaders.)
When there is a cover up of the cognitive decline of someone like our President though, how do you approach that conversation tactfully? It seems like there can be space for discussion of the actual disability without stigmatization, but what does that look like? Asking genuinely, as I’m not sure.
I tried to answer this here and in the FAIR piece I wrote linked to this piece. I think if it becomes clear that someone’s cognitive abilities make them unable to perform the job, it can be addressed. What has to be avoided is diagnosing people (the behavior is enough), stigmatizing language (he’s a vegetable etc), or any kind of demonizing of illness and disability.
That makes a lot of sense. I wasn't really able to articulate what it was about Ken's articles and content that was turning me off, but it really does reek of a lack of consideration. And looking at your FAIR article and the CDR guidelines has me considering that most of these stories that are "about" disability aren't actually about disability at all and are just using it as a blunt weapon.
Appreciate you taking the time to respond!
That’s a good way to put it. I think Ken and others don’t have the skill or patience to make the smart arguments about the gerontocracy, but they get attention by spreading hate
By no means should age or physical disability be used to discriminate. But the problem with politicians and other powerful individuals in our society is that their older than average age simply reflects the chronological implications of plutocracy (ie, a plutocracy is also necessarily a gerontocracy).
Think about it: a society where money rules all our affairs above all else is also one where the best connected people with the longest Rolodex of rich friends have an inordinate advantage over others, regardless of ability (or lack thereof). And it takes a long time to build up that Rolodex, so the older you are, the bigger your likely advantage in that department.
Sounds like your problem is with age and wealth not disability. So why support lazy arguments that focus on disability
I don't think the only point against Connolly, besides being old, is merely a blind prejudice against cancer patients. Connolly opened himself up to intense ridicule for being "Congressman Make-a-wish" after his remarks defending himself (he thought) when he rebuked more junior challengers to his run for ranking member of the House Oversight Committee by saying that, after all, he's never had his chance to chair his own committee. A lot of us mere mortals, whether cancer survivors or not, were thinking, "gee, maybe your higher priority should be to, number one, focus on your own health, and, number two, make sure that the most capable possible candidate takes on the role of leading opposition to an ongoing far right coup d'état".
I dunno you’re having trouble teasing out what your problem is with his cancer.
Would you feel the same if it were AOC with cancer?
Yes, if AOC had cancer and looked, adjusted for age, as close to death's door as he does, I'd advise her to put her own ambitions behind both the public good and her own recovery. (Of course, it's still not an apples-to-apples to comparison, seeing as how Connolly was the author of "pay-go". Otherwise, we'd also have to hypothesize a parallel universe in which Connolly was a progressive champion, as opposed to a bourgeois "moderate" reactionary.)
Interesting take on “deaths door.” Not at all how Connolly appears to me!
But it does sound like you adjust your principles around disease depending on the politics of the diseased office holder
I hope he's NOT at death's door, to be clear. But certainly in any case he should be spending his waning years with his loved ones, instead of wreaking more havoc on working class people with his vicious reactionary policies.
Mitch McConnell is 100% on “death’s door”
Elon Musk is the biggest plutocrat ever, in his early 50s.
Appreciate this article so much. Ken’s had some interesting articles in the past but the ableism has been through the roof in the past few months and it’s just so discouraging to see. There is no justice without disability justice, and “resisting facism” is a moot point if you replicate the same toxic shit elsewhere
Ooh I’m gonna read this later. Lookin forward to it!