The Celebrity Factor

Jack Osbourne on Dancing with the Stars!

The following was a comment I made on a G+ post discussing the celebrity mentioned above

I have an idea, if in this format, eg. "dancing" and with Jack it's to raise awareness about MS, well that's their spin.

How about the producers reserve X amount of seats in the audience for people that have MS, people in wheelchairs, people with scooters, people with crutches and their carers and family, put them in the front row!

Maybe then we could call it raising awareness, let's put the true face of MS, in people's faces, because seeing Jack mincing around the stage in no way shows what MS is really like for most of us! In fact most of the "brain dead" that will watch this crap, will just think, "gee MS isn't really that bad is it", sorry, twinkle toes isn't really doing much of a favour for us at all.

This is why I encourage real people talk, not platitudes, not celebs telling us how great life is, because they really are in no way similar to us normal everyday MSers. I'm sure many of us would be a lot better off if we got opportunities like this, rarely do celebs do something for nothing, rarely do they actually pay for anything, because it's all linked with advertising a product. It isn't real life, for the 99% of us humans in general.

One of the biggest problems MSers (disability in general) face on a day to day basis is acceptance in society, we aren't lazy, we aren't bludgers, we have a disease that as far as the science knows we didn't do anything to cause, it wasn't our fault, we didn't ask for it, it was thrust upon us!

Honestly and I don't wish this on Jack at all let me make that very clear, but for his appearance on the show to really raise awareness, would be if he had to pull out because he had an exacerbation and had to withdraw from the show, unfortunate but true! 

Feel good stories for me are people like +D Wolfe and his hiking, exploring and +kenyata reid for her cycling, +James O'Connor with his guitar playing and learning languages with a foggy brain, I'm absolutely sure there are many more instances and examples, I only picked those off the top of my head, for many of us just waking up and living is hard enough, we don't have an entourage of "hangers on", some of us don't even have much family support. So let's celebrate real people, real MSers and what they do!

I don't blame Jack that his parents are wealthy and he has had a privileged life, but always remember, those are the facts!

By the way if anyone gets offended by any of this, that isn't my problem it's yours :)