CNN anchor tweets disability slur

Don’t rile CNN anchor Jim Clancy on his downtime.

Following the Charlie Hebdo shooting last week in Paris which left 12 dead, Clancy tweeted that two Twitter accounts — @elderofziyon and @JewsMakingNews — are scheming together to advance “an anti-Muslim and pro-Israel agenda,” according to JNS.org.

In a Twitter exchange prior to the terrorist attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in which four Jews were murdered, Clancy, confronted by media watchdog Honest Reporting for his allegations, tweeted, “@HumanRights2K Get a grip, junior. It’s my Friday night. You and the Hasbara team need to pick on some cripple on the edge of the herd.”

That’s when Ruderman Family Foundation head Jay Ruderman entered the fray and demanded an apology, first via Twitter from Clancy — who blocked him — and then from CNN Worldwide president Jeff Zucker through email and fax.

“People are not sensitive to derogatory terms with disability issues,” said Ruderman, whose foundation passionately advocates inclusion for people with disabilities. “If we ignore it, people won’t realize they’re doing something wrong.”

“The ‘r’ word is used all the time in popular media. We cannot take someone’s disability and use it as an insult, but terms of disabilities — what are you deaf, are you blind, are you an idiot — are used all the time,” said Ruderman.

It is not the first time Ruderman is taking a stand against inappropriate use of language concerning disabilities.

A Jeffrey Goldberg article from October 28, 2014 had a White House aide describing Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu as “chickenshit” and “aspergery” — the latter referring to a disorder on the autism spectrum.

Then, as now, Ruderman took the lead to decry these slurs.

“We would never do that regarding someone’s color, but we haven’t yet progressed enough regarding disabilities. I’m confident society will get there one day and it will be just as taboo as using the ‘n’ word,” said Ruderman.