Michael J. Fox

[magazinewhore]

Wow, I didn't know that either. That's crazy that four of his castmates were also diagnosed.

I was worried he had passed, fitz. Glad he's okay.

[famvir]

Wasn't there some deal where Michael J Fox was interviewed, and the conservative host accused him of not taking his pills so he'd have more of a tremor? Was that Rush Limbaugh? I'll tell you, these conservative spokespeople are sure some asses.

[scarlet]

Good memory--that was 14 years ago:

link

[prisma]

He was also interviewed by Marc Maron on this week’s WTF podcast if you want more. It is a good interview.

[Ginger]

Michael wrote in his autobiography that when he testified before the Senate requesting funding for Parkinson's research, he intentionally did not take his medications so that his symptoms would be on full display, so Limbaugh wasn't actually wrong. Limbaugh's take that it was deceptive and manipulative is arguable.

[Ladybug]

My mother-in-law is in the final stages of Parkinson’s. She was diagnosed 20 years ago and has been on numerous medications and has had multiple treatments. They make the disease a bit easier to manage, but they have side effects, and just postpone the inevitable deterioration. She has taken so many falls, she can no longer walk without someone holding her and has broken bones. She has tremors and seizures that are frightening to witness. She also has a lot of trouble speaking above a very low whisper. It’s just a really cruel disease. So anyone suffering with this has my full sympathy. It feels like hell to have your life slip away slowly to Parkinson’s.

[Auroranorth]

Nov 21, 2020 16:26:36 GMT -4 Ginger said:

Michael wrote in his autobiography that when he testified before the Senate requesting funding for Parkinson's research, he intentionally did not take his medications so that his symptoms would be on full display, so Limbaugh wasn't actually wrong. Limbaugh's take that it was deceptive and manipulative is arguable.

I think that seeing the symptoms up close and personal is important, because Michael J. Fox, medicated and looking "normal," is very different than Patient X who can't afford hellishly expensive meds and who doesn't get asked to testify before the Senate.

[Ginger]

And as Michael says in the new interview, his meds require constant daily recalibrating and his symptomatic responses vary. It's not like he takes a pill at 8 am every day and the symptoms disappear. Experiencing symptoms is still his reality.

Limbaugh was just mad that Michael did an ad with Claire McCaskill and reframed it negatively.

[laurenj]

I read a different story about him recently that may have been excerpted from this interview, but that story picked up only the bleakest elements and made me very sad for him. This one is written in a different tone and was much less pessimistic.

It was refreshing, in a depressing way, to hear him talk about fearing that he'd "oversold" his experience. I always wonder about people who seem braver or more equipped to deal with such a devastating diagnosis and how it makes it seem like it's somehow less difficult for them. I can't decide if I think it could help other people or if it would make them feel worse when they can't be that cheerful.

Not that it's anyone's responsibility to be the face of anyone else's experience, but it's interesting to hear him touch on the topic.

I thought this was funny:

I ask how he felt during the 2016 campaign when Trump mocked the New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, who has a disability. “When you see your particular group mocked, it’s such a gut punch. It’s so senseless and cheap. There’s no way I get up in the morning and mock orange people,” he says, and then makes the grin that, for those of us who grew up watching him in the 1980s and 90s, is our Proustian Madeleine.

[kostgard]

He was so great as total bastard Louis Canning on The Good Wife. It was just refreshing to see a disabled character not handled with kid gloves. The show’s protagonist did when she first met him, then quickly realized he used his disability to manipulate her into being late to court and plays his disability up to get sympathy from juries. So after that first encounter every time he walked into the courtroom all the show’s protagonists were all, “Oh, fuck no! Not that guy!” and he would just crank up the charm to rub it in. I don’t know - it was just nice that he wasn’t the usual Hollywood magical disabled person, was a total asshole, and people hated him because he was an asshole and not for any reason related to his disability (his assholery also had nothing to do with his disability).

It sucks that things aren’t going as well as he would like. But his foundation really has done a lot for Parkinson’s research.

And I had heard that his costars also developed the disease. My grandfather had Parkinson’s, and my dad does think environmental factors played a role.