My friend Dan over at Gone Mild linked over to my blog with the entry "Courageous Mental Health Blogging." He says that even supporters (like himself) "tend to lurk in silence because it's not a topic we're accustomed to being honest about." That describes part of the reason stigma about mental health issues exist. I understand Dan's feelings and I have been there myself.NAMI (The National Alliance for the Mentally Ill) has a great network of Stigma Busters. Stigma Busters watch for images that portray mental illness in a particularly offensive and outmoded way. I have a site to recommend.
Krazy Kris Kobach showed up as a Google Ad on Gmail the other week. The site is a blog which seeks to negatively attack Republican Kansas Secretary of State candidate Kris Kobach. Sometimes politics is a full contact support. And Kobach is clearly an intelligent candidate who can more than defend himself.
My issue with the blog is the photoshopped image of Kobach in a straitjacket. This is a classic stigmatizing image for people with mental illness and the site should remove it immediately.
I would like to email the creators of the site, but they are anonymous and a check of the domain whois shows they have used a service to hide their identity. I don't know Kansas campaign law (or should I say kampaign law to keep with their kute use of the letter k?) but I wonder if they should have a disclosure (paid for) statement on the page.
I'm not a voter in Kansas and if I was, I probably wouldn't be a supporter of Kobach. I also recognize that by putting this blog entry up, more people will go the page. Still, the image, if not the entire site should come down.
The image is not funny. It is offensive in the extreme and critics of Kobach can do better.
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