George Takei posts fun stuff on Facebook daily, mostly photos with amusing captions. It’s working out – he’s got nearly seven and a half million Likes. People like his stuff who aren’t even Trekkies.

You can’t please everybody all the time. You can’t even please 7.5 million people all the time. So Takei’s used to complaints about this or that image. He took it in stride when people complained about a recent post. This was a photo of a woman standing up in front of a wheelchair so she could reach a high shelf in a liquor display.

Caption:

THERE HAS BEEN A MIRACLE

IN THE ALCOHOL ISLE [sic]

The joke was that apparently she didn’t need the wheelchair since she could stand perfectly well when she saw something she wanted, like booze.

But that’s not how it works.

Comments started flooding in, and many of them pointed out that not every wheechair user is, say, paraplegic. That you might be able to stand up, but not to walk across a parking lot and into a store. Without, you know, falling down, or damaging your body, or being so exhausted you have to go to bed for the rest of the day.

Other people told those people to shut up.

Takei apparently was traveling. He didn’t read the email that was pouring in, but he noticed savagery in the comments. He took down the picture. He was “decidedly irked by the tenor of some of those criticizing me,” and he posted:

Fans get “offended” from time to time by my posts. There hardly is a day where something I put up doesn’t engender controversy. Concerned fans, worried the sky may fall, ask me to ‘take it down.’
So I’m also going to ask them also to take it down – a notch, please.

That wasn’t an apology. It didn’t pretend to be an apology. It’s rather insulting. (Oh, were you worried the sky would fall? GET OVER YOURSELF.)

This isn’t the first time Takei has asked people to notch on down, or “…remember to take it back a notch with our fellow Netizens.”

People got angrier. The “joke” reflects a common misunderstanding that causes a lot of grief for many disabled people. The idea that anyone who can ever stand should never use a wheelchair is absurd, which people will realize if they actually think about it. But often they don’t think about it. If they see a wheelchair user stand or walk they may even accuse them of being fakers, or of trying to get sympathy. (Because who doesn’t envy the convenience and high status of a wheelchair? Who hasn’t been tempted?)

Cara Liebowitz, who blogs as That Crazy Crippled Chick, calls it disability binarism. She says the woman in the picture could easily have been her. She has cerebral palsy. She’s been called lazy, and she’s had a bus driver accuse her of “tricking” him.

She’s eloquent on the subject, writing, “This, THIS is why when I get on a bus with my scooter, I sit in it and ride, even though it’s less safe, even though my scooter has tipped over on buses before. THIS is why I don’t just park my scooter outside a bathroom stall and walk in. THIS is why, when I go out in public, I let people think that I’m a full-time chair user. THIS is why 99% of my college campus had no idea I can walk. Because of attitudes like this. Because of ableism like this.” (I highly recommend the whole post.)

Eventually Takei started reading his email. And thinking about it. He posted a long apology and explanation:

…I did not expect the level of offense this meme caused. I had naturally just thought of those movies where the evangelical preacher miraculously cures someone who was disabled. What I’d never really considered before so many fans wrote in is how that portrayal of disabled persons is filled with ignorance and prejudice—two things I never want to promote, even inadvertently.

Now, before all of you go and start defending my right to post what I want, I want first to thank the many fans who wrote in with the hopes of educating me on the question of “ableist” bias. While I did not ever mean to suggest by sharing the meme that all people in wheelchairs cannot walk, or that they don’t need them despite the fact that they can stand on their own from time to time, I have taken the fan mail and criticism to heart.

After I’d posted the meme, I noted in the comments an inordinate amount of very uncivil behavior on the part of many fans, including both those who demanded I take it down and those who said I should leave it up. I also received a good deal of email IN CAPITAL LETTERS asking me if I would feel the same way if someone called me FAG or a JAP. Now, I took down the meme from my timeline shortly after it went up, but I admit I was decidedly irked by the tenor of some of those criticizing me. In that moment, I posted a follow up telling fans that perhaps they should “take it down—a notch” which, in retrospect, was not the most sensitive response.
The fact that I was surprised by the response the wheelchair meme received indicates that I do indeed lack knowledge, and some sensitivity, over what is clearly a hot button issue, and that I and others can take this as an opportunity not to dig in, but rather to open up to the stories and experiences of those in the disabled community. I appreciate those who took the time to write in. I wish I’d had the chance to respond sooner, but until today I was not able to go through all the mail I’d received.
So to those who were hurt by my posts on this issue, I ask you please to accept this apology. To those who think I shouldn’t have to apologize, I want to remind you that I get to decide what I apologize for, so there’s no need to come to my defense.
Very well then, carry on, friends. Carry on.

I wondered about the repeated references to all those people who are defending his right to post the image, or who think he shouldn’t have to apologize. Is that just a superior way of saying “I got a lot of supportive email”? “A lot of people are on my side, so it’s extra-gracious of me to apologize”?

Yet lots of people did post in his support, and this includes them in his response. He still wants them to take it down that notch.

On the positive side, Takei doesn’t harp on prejudice and ignorance he’s experienced in his own life, such as when his whole family were interned during WWII for being Japanese or Japanese-American. Such as that whole gay thing. None of that “I am the persecuted one around here.”

He does take responsibility. He does say exactly what it is he’s apologizing for. Although I would question the phrase “hot button issue.” It often suggests that a person who’s offended is only upset because of their personal issues. “I didn’t realize that was a hot button for you” means that it wouldn’t be for someone else.

But he intimates that his obnoxious take-it-down-a-notch post was caused by people writing to him with hot-button words in all caps, so I think he doesn’t mean it that way.

He indicates that he has learned from this, and intends to learn more.

It’s a good apology. Takei learned to think more deeply about something. So did I.

I know some people who might say “Oh look, the internet outrage machine went into action, the blogosphere got all riled up, people got to complain about their favorite injustice, and someone was forced to apologize publicly for a joke – how stupid is that?”

I don’t see it that way. Because the joke went out to so many people, the responses went to many people too. I think a lot of people now have a slightly more nuanced idea of the significance of using a wheelchair. If a few bus drivers are less likely to call disabled people fakers, that’s a good thing.

Thanks, outrage machine.