{"id":1696722,"date":"2022-10-15T06:30:09","date_gmt":"2022-10-15T10:30:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1696722"},"modified":"2022-10-16T16:50:24","modified_gmt":"2022-10-16T20:50:24","slug":"david-harsanyi-its-not-ableist-to-wonder-if-fetterman-can-do-his-job","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/david-harsanyi-its-not-ableist-to-wonder-if-fetterman-can-do-his-job\/","title":{"rendered":"David Harsanyi: It&#8217;s Not \u201cAbleist\u201d to Wonder if Fetterman Can Do His Job"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">26<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Fdavid-harsanyi-its-not-ableist-to-wonder-if-fetterman-can-do-his-job%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=1696722&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>NBC News&#8217; Dasha Burns recently aired the first in-person interview with Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman since his stroke. The candidate needed a closed-captioned monitor to answer questions because of &#8220;auditory processing&#8221; struggles caused by his recent stroke. &#8220;In small talk before my interview,&#8221; Burns added, &#8220;it wasn&#8217;t clear he understood what I was saying.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p> Oh, boy.  Democrats swarmed, attacking Burns for stating the obvious: Fetterman isn&#8217;t OK. It&#8217;s remarkable to watch how quickly partisans can coalesce around a new talking point. For months, the national media has been telling us Fetterman&#8217;s campaign was completely &#8220;normal,&#8221; even as video emerges of the candidate struggling to cobble two coherent sentences in succession. In September, Fetterman said that the &#8220;only lingering issue&#8221; he experienced was occasionally missing a word or &#8220;mush(ing) two words together.&#8221; Yet in only a few minutes last night, the entire left adopted a new position, denouncing any mention of his ailment as an &#8220;ableist&#8221; attack on a person with a &#8220;disability.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Democrats struggled to calibrate this new accusation, comparing Fetterman&#8217;s cognitive struggles to handicaps. &#8220;How is this any different from Tammy Duckworth or Madison Cawthorn needing a wheelchair? How is it different from many elderly Senators who need hearing aids?&#8221; asked left-winger Eric Michael Garcia. Others wondered if it meant Fetterman critics believed &#8220;deaf&#8221; people should not run for office.<\/p>\n<p>Well, for one thing, being paralyzed does not undercut a person&#8217;s ability to comprehend ideas or articulate thoughts or participate in debates \u2014 all essential functions of a politician&#8217;s job. Fetterman is not deaf; he is unable to process spoken words because of brain damage. There&#8217;s a big difference. Some people completely recover from strokes, and some do not. We don&#8217;t know the extent of Fetterman&#8217;s problems because he won&#8217;t release his medical records. That&#8217;s his prerogative. And there is no shame in suffering a stroke. Nor is it ableist to wonder if a candidate running for the most powerful legislative body in the world is able to do his job.<\/p>\n<p>Kara Swisher, who recovered from a stroke, claimed she had spoken to Fetterman &#8220;for over an hour without stop or any aides.&#8221; Then, it&#8217;s fair to ask, why he can&#8217;t participate in a debate, and why can&#8217;t he answer basic questions from journalists without a closed-captioned transcriber? &#8220;If we&#8217;re going to judge folks by their verbal skills and zoning out,&#8221; she went on, &#8220;I have some internet billionaires you might want to meet. Most of them have all kinds of processing issues and seem to be doing just fine.&#8221; She added in a now-deleted tweet that autism is not &#8220;nearly as easy to solve as a stroke.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Does Fetterman have processing issues, or is it autism, or is he just fine? They&#8217;re still working it out. This is what happens when you create a political talking point on the fly. Then again, these days, your position doesn&#8217;t need to be consistent or coherent, just accusatory and sanctimonious.<\/p>\n<p>Indeed, the rage-filled meltdown over an interview has<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NBC News&#8217; Dasha Burns recently aired the first in-person interview with Pennsylvania senatorial candidate John Fetterman since his stroke. The candidate needed a closed-captioned monitor to answer questions because of &#8220;auditory processing&#8221; struggles caused by his recent stroke. &#8220;In small talk before my interview,&#8221; Burns added, &#8220;it wasn&#8217;t clear he understood what I was saying.&#8221; &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1696725,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[547],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1696722","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-bongino-report"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696722","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1696722"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1696722\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1696725"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1696722"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1696722"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1696722"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}