Content
I was under the impression that it was widely accepted that he was portraying someone with a stutter, but who knows. Malice was not intended, but that's where my frustration lies with Disney. They go above and beyond to be socially aware, sometimes to a fault. And they really dropped the ball with this. It just really annoyed me to the point that the stutter was way more prevalent when he was dishonest. It wasn't a good look. "Let's pay attention to LGBT, women, other various social issues. But making sure someone with a disability is not portrayed in a bad light? eh whatever, we don't really have time to worry about how that looks." This isn't a cafeteria; let's not pick and choose which social injustices to root for. Let's be all inclusive. Especially if Disney wants to tackle these issues, and it appears they do. The baseball player George Springer does a great job advocating for stutterers and he openly stutters and is a great role model for kids who stutter. He also does a summer camp which is awesome. I'm going down a rabbit hole, but how frustrating is it as a kid growing up to see these celebrities who stutter and never actually see them stutter? The majority either grew out of it, or were mild/moderate enough where they do all these mental gymnastics to hide it and be covert about it (specifically the actors. Paraphrasing here, but Emily Blunt basically told Howard Stern, she doesn't stutter anymore. And then says she won't make calls because she has a tough time with it. Hellooo, you still stutter! You just don't allow yourself to). It makes you feel shitty, like what's wrong with me that I still stutter? So kudos to George Springer to not hide his stutter and show kids it's OK to stutter. You can still make something of yourself.