Jerry Lewis, 82, will receive the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences' Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award at the 2009 Academy Awards ceremony on February 22, 2009. The Jean Hersholt award — an Oscar statuette — is given to "an individual in the motion picture industry whose humanitarian efforts have brought credit to the industry."
Jerry Lewis is well known for raising funds every year on behalf of the Muscular Dystrophy Association (MDA), where he has served as national chairman since 1952. As per the Academy's press release, since the annual Jerry Lewis MDA Labor Day Telethon kicked off in 1966, the program has raised more than $2 billion for the cause.
Among former recipients of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award are Sherry Lansing, Quincy Jones, Paul Newman, Danny Kaye, Audrey Hepburn, Elizabeth Taylor, Martha Raye, Gregory Peck, Rosalind Russell, and Samuel Goldwyn.
The 2009 Academy Award nominations will be announced on Thursday, January 22, 2009, at 5:30 a.m. Pacific Time at the Academy’s Samuel Goldwyn Theater in Beverly Hills.
The 2009 Academy Awards ceremony will be held on Sunday, February 22, 2009, at the Kodak Theatre at Hollywood & Highland Center. In the United States, it'll be televised live by the ABC Television Network.
Photo: Courtesy of MDA
Their pathetic "protest" was a COLOSSAL FAILURE!! Jerry Lewis got his well-deserved oscar.
BRAVO JERRY LEWIS!!
Disability activists and our allies will be protesting the granting of a "humanitarian" award to Jerry Lewis, who embraces and perpetuates all the worst stereotypes about people with disabilities. For more information go to thetroublewithjerry.com
Yes, I'm among the many who protest Jerry Lewis' receiving the humanitarian award. It's not simply because he uses derogatory language about gay people–or even that he has repeatedly referred to people with disabilities, the people he supposedly serves, as "cripples," or calls women nothing more than baby-making machines. This is crass language, to be sure, but maybe he thinks it's funny.
No, the problem lies in Jerry Lewis' MDA telethon itself. Year after year it exploits kids with disabilities to garner pity as a fund-raising technique. The pity does far more harm than good. Think about it: Would you hire one of "Jerry's kids" for a job? Would you want your daughter to marry one?
Medicalizing disability sets the disability-rights movement back decades.
What's more, the pity tactic is demeaning, and the consequences to the social status and self-esteem of people with disabilities are profoundly dangerous.
But when I, a former MDA poster child, offered to work with the charity to help it update its language and improve its image, to make peace with the activists who oppose it, I got hostility in return. Lewis himself has threatened to have his critics killed.
That's not funny. Applauding Jerry Lewis as a humanitarian IS funny, in the sense of odd. Worse than that, it's an insult to the disability community, the gay rights community, and the memory of Jean Hersholt.
CORRECT:I MEANT TO SAY I AM NOT DEFENDING WHAT HE SAID THEN,NOW AND IN THE FUTURE.BUT EVERYTIME SOME SAY SOMETHING,YOU DON'T LIKE,YOU EITHER PROTEST OR BAD MOUTH BEHIND THEIR BACKS,BECAUSE SOME PEOPLE GO BIG MOUTHS AND DO'NT USE THEIR BRAINS,OR IN JERRY LEWIS' CASE,TRY A ATEMPT AT HUMOR.LIKE AFRICAN-AMERICANS,JEWS AND EVERYONE ELSE,YOU NEED TO GET A LIFE AND STOP BEING SO OVERLY SENSITIVE.WE HAVE ANOTHER PROBLEMS IN THIS COUNTRY AND THE WORLD TO WORRY ABOUT,WE DO NOT NEED ANYMORE.