Days of Change

All Our Labors Lost

Four years ago, I started writing about the end of the Jerry Lewis Telethon. The Muscular Dystrophy Association, the charity funded by the telethon, fired Jerry Lewis in 2011. In subsequent years, it pared down the broadcast itself and reduced it to a special the day before Labor Day. This year, it is gone. The MDA announced earlier this summer there would be no broadcast.

I’m still curious about the sudden falling out between Jerry and his “kids” in the MDA. In recent years, people with different physical illnesses seemed to bristle at the way Jerry highlighted their troubles to get donations. It is literally the definition of handicap, putting ones cap in their hand to elicit someone to put money in it. Instead we have vague stickers in supermarkets and people pouring ice on their heads on YouTube.

Labor Day didn’t really have a memorial or a mascot or a type of party to distinguish it. It did, however, have an all-day cavalcade of stars to watch. Now, I guess people can just dwell on the jobs they don’t have or the jobs they have that are a dead-end. Thanks, Obama.

Wait, didn’t Jerry Lewis say something bad about Obama a few years ago?