Often people come up to me on the street and they say, “Hey Smart Ass Cripple, do you have any regrets about being a poster child?” And my answer is oh hell yeah!
In retrospect, I realize now that I should have never consented to being paraded around as a symbol of urgent crisis without first hiring an agent. With a high-powered agent, I could have made a bundle!
I was young at the time, like still in single digits, so I had no idea that my boney little crippled ass was sitting on a goldmine. The precious commodity I possessed was my immense adorability. It was worth so much and I just gave it away, dammit! The cripple charity could never have raised anywhere near as much without the help of my adorability. So I should have had an agent to demand my cut. I’m well aware of the law of supply and demand. I know that if I withheld my adorability, some scab poster cripple may well have crossed my picket line and stolen my spotlight. But maybe not, because my crippled sister and I were a poster child team. We were a one-two punch of adorability, enough to intoxicate even the most calloused libertarian into opening his/her wallet. If my sister and I held out together, we could have had a huge payday.
Fifty years later I’m still adorable, but in much more subtle ways. It’s not the kind of adorability I can parlay into a lucrative career. But I have faith that I can still cash in on my crippledness. My spirit is buoyed every time someone famous says something insulting about gay people or women or Native Americans or whomever and it stirs media outrage. I know that sooner or later someone famous will say something that insults cripples. It’s happened before. When Rahm Emanuel was White House chief of staff, he got in trouble when it was reported that he referred to some democrats who disagreed with him as “fucking retarded.”
So Rahm did as all offending parties in this situation do. He set out in search of members of the offended party, which in this case was cripples, to buddy up with. It’s the same reason republicans show up at Martin Luther King events. I swear if I organized a Martin Luther King event I would make republicans pay a fortune to attend. Because here they are wanting to disassociate themselves from all things racist and bigoted, but they also want to continue to be republicans. That’s an awful lot to ask for, but okay. We can play along. But it will cost you a fortune.
So I’m excited to announce that Smart Ass Cripple’s Image Laundry is now open for business! The next time a famous person insults cripples, send them my way. I’ll buddy up with them for a photo op and clean their image up reeeeeeeal good. If need be, I’ll even subcontract a wide variety of other cripples to join in.
I’ll charge a bundle because that type of redemption is invaluable. It’s almost as valuable as my long-lost adorability.
