WITH HOPE IN YOUR HEART: During the early 1990s, along with a commenter on this site I was frequently engaged in online arguments on issues pertaining to male-only fraternities and sexual assault, with defenders of sex discrimination insisting that any harms these organizations caused were outweighed by the good deeds and charitable works they performed. At the time I swatted away those arguments, insisting with a good amount of righteous fervor that there was no cost-benefit calculus in which a fraternity could raise enough money for charity to balance off the negative side of its moral ledger, and that the good deeds themselves were not dependent on the existence of discrimination in order to occur.
And yet when it comes to the decision of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences to honor Jerry Lewis with the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, that kind of calculus is exactly where my mind turns. Make no mistake -- Jerry Lewis has said appalling things in his life, whether it's offending women, anti-gay slurs or demeaning individuals living with disabilities. I wouldn't be surprised if he were the type of person who casually used the slur "retarded" to describe anything he doesn't like. Indeed, Lewis has admitted that the closest any of his film roles came to his true self was as the arrogant late-night host in The King of Comedy, accurately described by Ed Copeland as "a sheltered asshole who wishes he could avoid public contact as much as possible."
Then there's the other side of the ledger. After helping establish the Muscular Dystrophy Association in 1952, he started the Labor Day Telethon in 1966, raising around $2 billion for neuromuscular patient care and research over the years, including $1.5 billion just from the show-ending tote boards. It's just a staggering number, and the list of celebrities who have done as much as he has for a cause is tiny: Bob Hope, Danny Thomas and Lance Armstrong. Really, who else?
[While researching this piece, I came across a worthy clip or two: Sammy Davis Jr. at an early-80s MDA telethon singing "And I Am Telling You I Am Not Going."; The Jackson 5, "Dancing Machine" (1974 telethon). And for the Animaniacs fans, I again present Hearts of Twilight.]
So I suppose Lance Armstrong provides one way to think about this: how badly would he have to behave for you to not want to honor his work on cancer research and awareness? How badly would he have had to humiliate Sheryl Crow? What slurs would he have to be caught uttering? Because whatever that threshold is for you, Lewis has raised eight times as much money as Armstrong has, in ~40 years compared with twelve. Add in a potential old-people-are-allowed-to-be-cranky discount if you're being generous, though not at all if you credit the arguments of those in the disability rights community that calling adults with muscular dystrophy Jerry's "Kids" and some of Lewis' other fundraising tactics are sufficiently demeaning and patronizing to dishonor the whole enterprise.
Then again, Mel Gibson provides another analogous situation. If over the next decade Mel Gibson raised a half-billion dollars for and spent countless hours towards some indisputably worthy cause, and did so in a humble manner, I'm not sure even that could rehabilitate his image in my mind. Maybe I've just got too soft a spot for The Nutty Professor -- and not enough of one for Ransom or The Man Without A Face -- to evaluate this properly.
This isn't a question on which I'm terribly confident in my conclusion. I lean towards saying that he deserves the award and the protest, but I'm not going to say "don't give him the award; he's just been too much of an ass to deserve that moment" because his charitable work has been overwhelming. You, however, are free to say otherwise, and to sway my malleable mind accordingly.
More: Lewis reminisces with EW.
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