"Tropic Thunder" and People with Intellectual Disabilities

Timothy Shriver has a great op ed piece in the Washington Post about the portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities in the film due out this week, "Tropic Thunder."  This film has been vaguely on my radar screen as containing potentially offensive racial characterizations, but what sounds like some truly offensive characterizations of people with intellectual disabilities doesn't appear to be raising much objection.  Shriver's piece includes this heart-breakingly realistic description of the continuing systemic discrimination against people with intellectual disabilities in our society:

People with intellectual disabilities are routinely abused, neglected, insulted, institutionalized and even killed around the world. Their parents are told to give up, that their children are worthless. Schools turn them away. Doctors refuse to treat them. Employers won't hire them. None of this is funny.

For centuries, they have been the exception to the most basic spiritual principle: that we are each equal in spirit, capable of reflecting the goodness of the divine, carriers of love. But not people with intellectual disabilities. What's a word commonly applied to them? Hopeless.

Let's consider where we are in 2008. Our politics are about overcoming division, our social movements are about ending intolerance, our great philanthropists promote ending poverty and disease among the world's poor. Are people with intellectual disabilities included in the mainstream of these movements? For the most part, no.

Why? Because they're different. Their joy doesn't fit on magazine covers. Their spirituality doesn't come in self-help television. Their kind of wealth doesn't command political attention. (The best of the spirit never does.)