Great commentary, but you forgot about one crucial element: Jerry Lewis is a pretentious jerk. For literally decades he has been observed condescending not only to the handicapped but to everyone in his path.

Let's just do the right thing this one time and put this appallingly outdated individual out to pasture.

-- Linda Riley

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Lorenzo Milam hits the proverbial nail on the head in his commentary on the backlash against Jerry Lewis' comments regarding the M.D. sufferers he raises money for. They are, indeed, cripples. They do invoke both pity for them as well as infinite thanks that we're not in the same boat.

As I watch the left- and right-wing militants seek to sanitize the English language toward their own political and social ends, I can't help but feel we're losing something important. "Differently abled" is a term designed to make people think that really nothing's wrong, that it's all OK and that maybe the person's just happy the way they are, when we know that for these kids with M.D. that simply isn't the case. "Cripple," however, evokes a vivid image, rouses a concerned community to action and thus provides increased volunteer action and research funding.

We've euphemized the meaning out of our language. Instead of wife beating, now we talk about spousal abuse -- not necessarily because the two terms have different meanings but because the former forces us to envision bloodied noses and bruised legs, an image we might be forced to act on. When Lewis refers to cripples, he's forcing us to look at the reality of a painful existence cut tragically short, something some of us just don't want to see, and it's dramatically effective.

-- Gregory Dyas

Your subheading states: The veteran comedian is in trouble with the militant disabled for using words like "cripple" and "pity."

Have Salon and Milam fallen for the false notion that disability rights activists are in a tizzy because someone used a word we don't like? Please.

Lewis' vocabulary is not at issue. His opinions are: "You don't want to be pitied because you are a cripple in a wheelchair? Stay in your house." This from the man who, in 1991, referred to wheelchair users as "half-persons."

With friends like these ...

Yes, people in wheelchairs evoke pity. Yes, even in our day, people who have black skin evoke emotions ranging from distrust to fear and hatred. Would anyone claiming to be a champion of civil rights consider exhorting blacks who wish it were otherwise to become prisoners in their own homes? Such advice would be defined as obscene.

I'm not sure which is more obscene -- Lewis' bigotry or Milam's exoneration of it.

-- Chava Willig Levy

Lorenzo Milam's essay shows that "crips" are just as able as anyone else to mouth off about things they don't know much about. Milam may be a brother crip, but he doesn't know much about the telethon controversy. It's not about the words, though obviously using bad words is a danger signal. One may assume they are used for a purpose. "Cripple" is analogous to "nigger." On the streets of my home city of Charleston, S.C., I may hear African-Americans greet one another: "Yo! Nigger! What's happening?" But if someone else uses the word about them, it signals disrespect. If a high-profile spokesman uses a term of contempt for the people he's supposedly speaking for, he might expect to catch a little flak for it.

But as I said, the words aren't the problem. The problem is a high-profile spokesman for a powerful multimillion-dollar media empire telling us "cripples" that if we don't want pity we should stay in our houses. That's what has us up in arms and, yes, out on the streets. If you don't hear the animus in this, play the "substitute the minority group" game. Try: "If you don't want to be groped for being a broad, stay in your house." Or: "If you don't want to be bashed for being gay, stay in your house." Would Milam or any other person of common decency be surprised if the objects of such remarks took umbrage?

Oh, Milam apparently thinks, like Lewis, that there's a difference. The difference is supposedly that we are pitiful. Milam accepts as gospel truth the notion that people with muscle diseases are the sad "dying children" that Lewis has talked about all these years. We deserve all the pity we get.

I deny that. And unlike Milam I know what I'm talking about. I'm one of those "kids" who was told at a very tender age that I was terminally ill. Next month I'll be 44 years old, and I'm not dead yet. Jerry says people like me "can't work, can't do anything." That's false too. I work as a lawyer and do other mischief besides.

Like Milam, I encounter pity as a part of daily life. Like Milam, I'm old enough to try to react to it with understanding and kindness. The security guard at the grocery store has no idea what my life is really like. People who know me generally get over their pity pretty fast. They come to learn that a life on wheels isn't necessarily miserable, and that most of what they've heard about "Jerry's kids" is a lie. Like women who have fought for the right to go out without being groped, and the gays who struggle to go out without being bashed, I will struggle for a day when I can go out without being subjected to ill-informed, ignorant pity. To do that, I have to tell my truth. I'll be on the streets protesting the telethon this year, for the 11th year in a row.

If you want the real deal, go to www.cripcommentary.com. Learn about the telethon protest from the people who know.

-- Harriet McBryde Johnson

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