#sexism
The NotPeople Magazine Cluelessest Man Alive Interview: Harper’s Rick MacArthur Gets Notpersonal With Janky Wheelchair About John Hockenberry, Disability, and #MeToo
Photo courtesy Spectator
He strides into the cafe we’ve agreed to meet at. Leggy, silver-tressed, with creamy skin lightly dusted with freckles, Harper’s president and publisher Rick MacArthur is a knock-out at 62 even in the rumpled khakis that glide over his still-boyish hips. When he collapses into a chair, he lays a Trapper Keeper on the table, murmuring that it’s ten times better than that [bleeped] phone nonsense.
Announcing that this is his cheat day — “I learned recently this referred to food!” — he peruses the menu — “This menu’s paper quality is fantastic, isn’t it?” — before ordering a green juice, bananas Foster, and a double Scotch. He asks me when the guy who’s doing the interview is going to show. He is adorable. He asks again, using the words, “Chop chop.” He’s everything this interview said he’d be.
I’m still mesmerized by how stunning Rick MacArthur is, in person. The Author’s Guild photos don’t do him justice. I ask who dressed him for our interview and he gazes at me with fathomless confusion before laying his fingertips lightly on his shirt-front and saying, “I should know this! He’s worked for our family since before I was born. He’s going to be so mad at me. Not that he’ll ever express it.”
As the long-awaited second installment of Tales From the Crip’s series, Imaginary Interviews With People Who We Wish Were Imaginary, our new FuckAbility™ Research Council‘s Crip Carpet Correspondent, Janky Wheelchair, follows up on TryHarder™ Magazine’s recent take-down of John Hockenberry’s journaling essay, “Exile,” by devoting an entire episode of THE SIT-DOWN to publisher of the essay, Harper’s Rick MacArthur.
Janky Wheelchair portrait courtesy of hiveminer.com/User/klickertrigger
The vivacious magnate talks nonstop about why paraplegics can’t sexually harass anyone; why he, a Francophile, is launching a Moi Aussi men’s movement to counter Me Too’s “Soviet-style” excesses; why paper is the future of Harper’s; and how everyone forgets how great John Hockenberry was in the film Coming Home. Keep reading for the unedited transcript of Janky Wheelchair’s exclusive hard-hitting interview with lively minx Rick MacArthur.
Flambee your bananas and keep the Scotch flowing because Harper’s RICK MACARTHUR is gracing the cover of NotPeople magazine as the CLUELESSEST MAN ALIVE!
And Now a Word From the FuckAbility™ Research Council on Top Chef, Season 15, Episodes 5 and 6
In Which the FuckAbility™ Research Council DisRespectfully Suggests Tom Colicchio Was High When He Allowed a Cooking Challenge to be Held at 7,500 Feet Above Sea Level Given That One Cheftestant Was Pregnant and Two Others Were Using C-PAPs
Please pack your ableism and go
(The Height of Ignorance, CO) In a shocking twist, a pregnant woman and two men who don’t breathe great found this week’s battle to be a literally uphill one when they were dumped on a friggin’ mountaintop site where Lando Calrissian is planning to break ground for his Cloud City Diner. The guest judge, Ivan Denisovich Shukhov, announced the week’s challenge: Make a truly memorable dish for your own memorial service.
And — as every *real* chef should be able to do — pitch a tent in deep snow, walk around in the snow, endure freezing temperatures for over 24 hours, and manipulate sharp implements with exposed hands.
it’s even money at this point whether top chef knows that the “chilling effect” of asinine workplace practices and attitudes on women and disabled workers won’t be corrected with a thermostat.
With all due dis-respect to restaurant kitchen tradition and gulags everywhere, fuck that noise. Just because Leann still won episode 5 doesn’t make it acceptable that she had to forfeit the rest of the competition in episode 6. Seriously, she’s a fucking powerhouse and you fucked with the career trajectory of a hard-working woman chef of color. Yeah, she knew what the challenge was and, yeah, it was her pregnancy. So? That’s quite a fucking choice for her, isn’t it?
HEY! YOU! MEDIA!: Let’s Make Suicide Awareness Month and World Suicide Prevention Day Inclusive of People With Disabilities
5. Why is suicide being presented as a solution, rather than a problem, when the people involved have disabilities?
September is Suicide Awareness Month and September 10 is World Suicide Prevention Day. I’m writing this because media coverage over the past year alone seems to warrant an explicit reminder that:
- We don’t lack awareness of people with disabilities committing suicide; we do allow vulnerable people to feel shame over chronic pain and depression.
- Our suicides deserve prevention, not encouragement and cultural misrepresentation, as in films such as Me Before You.
What’s the context beyond the medical? What are the underlying attitudes guiding how the media’s coverage of people with disabilities who have committed suicide or who are planning to do so?
Tales From the Crip 