Fox Says He Wasn’t Off His Meds For Ad
I’m not sure I care if he was or wasn’t.
NEW YORK - In a response to charges by conservative talk-show host Rush Limbaugh, Michael J. Fox defended his appearance in recent political campaign ads, saying he was neither acting nor off his medication for Parkinson’s disease.
On the contrary, he had been overmedicated, the actor said during an interview aired on Thursday’s “CBS Evening News with Katie Couric.”
“The irony of it is that I was too medicated,” Fox told Couric, adding that his jumpy condition as he spoke to her reflected “a dearth of medication — not by design. I just take it, and it kicks in when it kicks in.”
“That’s funny — the notion that you could calculate it for effect,” he said. “Would that we could.”
The 7 1/2-minute interview with Fox, whose shaking at one point dislodged the microphone clipped to his jacket lapel, aired in two segments taped Thursday afternoon on the “Evening News” set.
Some video of Fox’s interview here.
Could Fox have manipulated his medication to make his condition appear worse for that ad? It’s not outside the realm of possibility. This is obviously an issue Fox cares passionately about, and if he thought a few extra tremors and shimmys would give his message some extra juice I’m guessing he’d go for it.
Does it matter? I don’t think so. Fox’s point was this: I have a disease that I think could be cured or treated better through stem cell research.
Now you can either agree or disagree with him on that point (I both agree and disagree, but that’s a subject for another post), but where does making a point about his medication lead? Nowhere. It’s sort of shallow, and fairly petty and really has no relevance one way or another to the point Fox made.
I like Rush, and I appreciate the point he’s making about the left using spokespeople who they feel evoke sympathy and are beyond criticism. Cindy Sheehan was propped up by the left as a anti-war spokesman because her status as a grieving mother made it easy to accuse her critics of attacking a mom who lost her son. Rep. Jack Murtha was propped up as the Democrat spokesman on the war in Iraq because he’s a veteran with a long and honorable military service, thus anyone criticizing him can be accused of “attacking a distinguished veteran.”
The same is undoubtedly true of Fox. They put him out there as a spokesman for their side on stem cell research, and anyone criticizing his position is going to be susceptible to “attacking a sick man” claims.
But all that aside, Rush’s statement about Fox’s medication is still…pointless. It was a dumb thing to say.
