Any discomfort I felt at the Michael J. Fox political commercial for Claire McCaskill (as discussed here) has of course been displaced by the attempts, by Mr. Limbaugh and others, to smear the guy. This is how the game is played these days. When someone comes out and tells you something you don't want to hear, you have to argue that the viewpoint isn't real so it doesn't count. Claiming that Fox was acting or exaggerating his symptoms comes from the same mindset that insists, every time some military veteran denounces the war, that the guy really didn't serve with any honor so what he says really doesn't count.
My negative reaction to the ad was tempered a bit more when I read here — and I'm assuming this is so — that the spot came about because Fox himself heard McCaskill give a radio address regarding stem cell research. He then produced the commercial, sent it to her and asked her to use it if she felt so inclined. In any case, it doesn't look like he's being exploited in any way.
Several folks wrote in to say that my unease was surely due to not having seen Michael J. Fox like that before. Well, no. I've known people who suffered from Parkinson's and other conditions that produce similar symptoms…and I had seen Fox interviewed when his body seemed way out of his control. I forget where but I had. Others wrote that the tastelessness is because it's a raw appeal to emotion over intellect. That's true to some extent but it's also true of about 60% of all the political commercials out there.
I finally decided that what made me a bit squeamish when I first saw the ad was my sense of where it would lead. Obviously, Michael J. Fox would be attacked for it. Obviously too, if there was any sense that it might have gotten his candidate some votes — whether she won or not — there'd be similar ads, trotting out the ill and infirm to say, in effect, "Don't vote for Candidate X or I'll die." Given the low standard of "truthiness" in campaign ads these days, you could probably find a way to make that case against any incumbent.
The most interesting (to me) argument against the commercial is the one that deals with it not as political weaponry but as something that gives "false hope" to people with conditions like Fox's. This argument is advanced by people who believe that embryonic stem cell research is a scientific snipe hunt with little or no chance of ever yielding a cure for anything. I have no idea if this is true…or even if the research is anywhere near the point where that could be judged. However, I will note that folks like Limbaugh who say this often get hysterical when someone suggests shutting down the development of the "Star Wars" missile defense system in spite of a certain paucity of evidence that it will ever work. Still, it sounds like such a wonderful remedy for such a troubling problem that I think some people just don't want to turn loose of the comforting thought that a Miracle Cure may be possible. Let's hope that embryonic stem cell research never seems that hopeless.