The Guardian - Rod Liddle vilifies disabled people. I’m tired of the hate. We all should be (2019) Frances Ryan

Cheshire

Cheshire

Senior Member (Voting Rights)
You would be forgiven if, weighed down by the row over the Islamophobia embedded in the British press, you had missed Rod Liddle’s piece in the Sunday Times about disabled people, specifically those with myalgic encephalomyelitis or ME.

The headline – “Always fatigued, yet they never tire of claiming their malady really is a virus” – gives a fair hint at the level of bile the piece contains, but to summarise: Liddle uses the resignation of a researcher into ME, Michael Sharpe, to peddle the well-worn trope that the condition is “all in the mind” – or as he puts it, “that their complaints about a virus have no basis in fact”. It has understandably distressed many people with ME, with the piece going viral on social media.
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https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/19/rod-liddle-disabled-people-hate-media-me
 
I thought it was fine. Its focus was that it's time mainstream media stopped giving hate merchants like Liddle a platform, rather than ME.

The claim that letting such contrarian voices into the mainstream and “exposing” them or “winning” by successfully challenging these views is surely long up, as are arguments of “freedom of speech”. Outside of the readers who are disgusted by rants against disabled people or Muslims, the truth is, many others take it in as standard reporting. Hiring people like Liddle, while shutting marginalised people out of newsrooms, does nothing but add toxicity to the already rotting discourse, contributing to an ever-more poisonous climate for the targeted groups to live in.

Whether it is ME patients or another target, huge swathes of the media have normalised hatred and suspicion of minorities for years. Every editor who commissions it, reads it, and decides to go ahead and print it is not only complicit, but actively responsible in facilitating it. I am tired. Tired of all it. We all should be.
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Jonathan Edwards said:
It is a pity that nobody is prepared to pick up on the back story.
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But, yes.

Edit: I've only just caught up with some other threads, where I see that there was pre-publication hope that this article would have been a lot more useful to our cause, and that there were lots of offers of assistance to Ryan from PwME. So, I better understand the disappointment now.
 
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I'll admit it's not the piece I was hoping for - but I'm not going to complain about an article that includes links to the open letter to the Lancet, Hilda Bastian's recent blog and the Centre for Welfare Reform's takedown of the BPS model of disability.

And it's in The Guardian of all places - for that fact alone it deserves a short round of applause. Of course on past form they'll give Michael Sharpe a right of reply tomorrow....
 
I guess, I just wanted to see more, explicit support for us.

And I actually don't get why more people elsewhere aren't viewing the behaviour and speech from Sharpe, in particular, and his various cronies as the ones spewing the toxicity - or perhaps they are and they just don't call it out.

I'd love to know at what point does Sharpes behaviour start to bring the psychological profession(s) into disrepute? And if there is a point, when do his colleagues start taking some sort of action. @Brian Hughes @Carolyn Wilshire , any ideas?

After all, my default assumption, probably like a lot of pwME out there, is that if you are a psych of any sort, you basically don't know shit about anything, all you do is bluster through the day making it up as you go along, and if it goes wrong then you patient blame. I have to be convinced that any psych has any competence or common sense, and I have to say that the list who have managed that is very short.
 
It's horses for courses. It's easy here in S4ME to forget that the major proportion of the population would not grasp or identify with anything deeper, and probably not bother even to read it. Yet those are some of the most important people who need to be enlightened. Good advocacy is about educating and enlightening all walks of society, not just those we ourselves most identify with. So I think this fills an important gap, and credit to Frances Ryan for doing that. Maybe plenty of other people could write it ... but they haven't, whereas she has.
 
Yes, a mixed bag with the focus on Liddle.There are links to articles on the science. Obviously S4ME members know the science & politics inside out despite both being complicated to explain to the lay person.

Bless them, Frances Ryan's advisers aren't the strongest on the science though.

The implications of PACE have been picked up by professional controversialists like Liddle and previously to a lesser degree previously by David Aaronovitch.

Both have major depression and see the illness through the lens of mental health.

If it generates further interest in PACE rather than Liddle then it will be a success.
 
I'm with @Barry on this one. I think it could bridge the gap for some people, or give them something that will help frame furter attacks from Sharpe et al in a more nuanced light. Hopefully someone will pick up the deeper story soon, and this could help get us there. I also think she deserves credit for pulling this together in a day.
 
Estherbot said:
The implications of PACE have been picked up by professional controversialists like Liddle and previously to a lesser degree previously by David Aaronovitch.

Both have major depression and see the illness through the lens of mental health.
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I knew Aaronovitch had talked about his being helped by therapy. I hadn't heard about Liddle. Would you have a link to something that mentions it, please?
 
"Liddle uses the resignation of a researcher into ME, Michael Sharpe..."


He's not exactly "resigned" - but threatened to remove his snout from the funding trough.

Wessely was claiming back in 2001 (Guardian, Sarah Bosely) to have quit the field:

“Prof Wessely has quit the field – and is not the only professional to have ceased involvement with CFS.”

“Simon Wessely, of the Department of Psychological Medicine at Guy’s, King’s and St Thomas’s School of Medicine in London, is a former key figure in the study of ME/CFS who has felt the heat and largely backed out of the kitchen.”


By 2007, I'd counted over 20 CFS papers Wessely had his name on, published since having claimed to have quit the field in 2001.

I suggest keeping a close eye on PubMed over the coming years.

 
chrisb said:
He is clearly an exponent of foreign tactics. "Reculer pour mieux sauter."
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Even allowing time for any ongoing studies at the point he was interviewed, in 2001, to reach completion, plus time for publication of papers on any ongoing studies, Wessely racked up an impressive number, post "having quit the field".


Here's the links for the 2001 Sarah Bosely articles:

Storm brews over ‘all in mind’ theory of ME, Guardian, 20 September 2001

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,554693,00.html


A very modern epidemic, Guardian, 27 September 2001

http://education.guardian.co.uk/higher/medicalscience/story/0,,559001,00.html


Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose...
 
JohnTheJack said:
I knew Aaronovitch had talked about his being helped by therapy. I hadn't heard about Liddle. Would you have a link to something that mentions it, please?
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I'm trying to find where I read it. I believe it was revealed when Liddle's 2014 book Selfish, Whining Monkeys came out.

It was also a factor when Isabel Hardman wrote a piece on ME for the Spectator. She later revealed he suffers from depression.

When people with depression are told ME is not psychological, they naturally get defensive
 
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