“My basic objection to the telethon is that it encourages us to mourn again and again; that it reinforces the message that being disabled is not okay; that it implies that disabled people should get what they need through charity, not as a matter of right; and that it discourages us as a society from accepting disability and seeking to accommodate it permanently into our social fabric.” -Laura Hershey, quoted in Mary Johnson, A Test of Wills: Jerry Lewis, Jerry’s Orphans, and the Telethon, The Disability Rag, September 1992