Andrea Fay Friedman is now officially one of our favorite people. In case you haven't been following the dust-up, here's the deal:
Last week, Fox's animated series "Family Guy" featured a character named Ellen. The character--and Andrea Fay Friedman, who provided the character's voice--both suffer from Down Syndrome.
Now, for those of you unfamiliar with the program, you should know that the humor of "Family Guy" is not known for class and sophistication: Fart jokes pass for witty bons mot. So in last week's episode, when one of the regular characters asked Ellen about her parents, and when Ellen replied that her father was "an accountant, and my mom is the former governor of Alaska"--well, let's just say it could have been worse.
Not for Sarah Palin, though. Palin, whose own son Trig also suffers from Down Syndrome, saw the joke as an attack on her defenseless child. (Though considering that the show portrayed a Down Syndrome sufferer--played BY a Down Syndrome sufferer--as a fully functioning young adult, we find it hard to see how this constituted an attack. Anyway.) In predictable Palin-esque fashion, she launched an attack on the show's producers and enlisted her daughter Bristol "abstinence pledge" Palin in the campaign.
So how does Andrea Fay Friedman feel about all this? From an e-mail she sent to the New York Times:
"I guess former Governor Palin does not have a sense of humor. [In my family] we think that laughter is good. [I was raised] to have a sense of humor and to live a normal life. . . . My mother did not carry me around like a loaf of French bread the way former Governor Palin carries her son Trig around looking for sympathy and votes."
!!!!!
Can we get an "AWWWWWW, NO SHE DIII-N'T!!!"
Ms. Friedman, we would like to offer you full citizenship in Solipsist Nation.
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