Coverage of Disabilities

I enjoyed this lecture because it is a less touched on topic in media. And it's a great deal of issues of racism and minorities in the media. In class, we spoke briefly on the different television shows now involving characters and people with physical or mental disabilities and I found it interesting how many shows actually do involve people with disabilities.
For example, someone mentioned "Family Guy" and this was a PERFECT example of collaborating all types of stereotypes into one of America's leading animated comedies. Cleveland and Loretta Brown are two of the Griffins neighbors and best friends, Mort Goldman is a Jewish pharmacist and a friend of Peters, Mort Goldman has a "nerd" for a son named Neil, Glenn Quagmire is societies typical creepy pervert next-door neighbor, Joe Swanson is the Griffins' neighbor who is confined to a wheelchair because he is a paraplegic, and lastly, there is Channel 5's Tom Tucker's son, Jake who is deformed with an upside-down face. This basically touches every type of obvious stereotype in television. The episode, Jon Swanson, the paraplegic, made his debut appearance was actually a "risky" episode for "Family Guy" to me. Peter didn't know he was disabled and invited him to play for their baseball game and everyone was pissed when they found out he was confined; however, he turned out being the star of the game and he appears in nearly every episode being the hero many times now.
I believe the media is becoming much more comfortable with including disabled characters into shows because society seems to be becoming much more accepting to the idea. Even the Disney channel and Nickelodeon include characters with disabilities. I think it's a great step in the media.