This very old permanent A list mostly television actor who most of you know from his movies has always been a bit of a closet racist but as he has aged it has been more overt to the point where several caregivers and others have walked out and quit.
"Caregivers." "Mostly TV." "You know from his movies." That rules out Reiner and Douglas, Chase (Does he have caregivers?). Shatner seems right on the edge of "maybe." Does he have caregivers?
Look, in the last few years of elderly life the brain breaks down. People that never said a cuss word will start being very vulgar. Paid professional health professionals know this and accept it. Not saying they like it, but they understand the reasons behind the ugly behavior.
Sorry - seeing my father pass away in his 90s and hearing what came out of his mouth near the end, I give a hard pass to expecting what is said at that point to be consistent with their character. I know my dad normally did not think walls were made out of peanut butter.
if you read clearly - "caregiver" - that means a family member or paid helper who regularly looks after a child or a sick, elderly, or disabled person."
What Famous mostly TV actor is sick or disabled or old and ready to die?
If anyone wants to start telling me what TV shows made actor Stan Lee a permanent A list actor who we know from movies let me know. I'll be here all weekend. He draws comic books people, that's where he gets his legendary status, nowhere else. I DGAF what tv show he cameos on as himself.
The "real" Archie Bunker was Carroll O'Connor and he hated saying the racist stuff, so he argued with Norman Lear all the time about the script. Norman said it on his recent special. I think DVD is too healthy to be the guy, same with Chase.
The person who fits this best unfortunately is Mel Brooks. We know him more for movies but he is also permanent A list for his tv career before his movies.
Oh God I hope not Mel. In his case, I doubt he was secretly racist all along. Closet bigots usually try to act more-tolerant-than-thou, but he made FUN of everything. True bigots don't dare to do that. So if he is saying weird things, it's his brain fizzling out. I've seen complete transformations in people who are very sick and old. It's their true selves being LOST, not coming out.
Unfortunately, Reiner and Van Dyke are the ones that fit this best, IMO. I'll go with Van Dyke, since he's recently in the news for his brother's death. I think Rob Reiner would be pissed at his father if he treated folks this way (unless it's dementia; that shit is totally unpredictable).
Kirk Douglas and Stan Lee are 'permanent A list mostly Tv actors' we know from movies. Read the blinds, people! Stan, not a director. Kirk, not mostly TV. Reiner might fit in that he was mostly TV as an actor but we know him from movies.
Former family caregiver to a father with dementia here (he died in November of 2015, in his own home on hospice, my task took 10 years & 5 months to complete).
Please allow me to school y'all.
People back in the day were raised with more racist & other -ist beliefs. We have (theoretically) progressed socially, or at least enough to watch what we say around one another assuming our brains are functioning reasonably well.
If an older person gets dementia (and that is ***not*** normal aging but brain failure & death), those thoughts will come out. Especially with Fronto-Temporal Dementia (the so called behavioral variant in particular) or CTE (being seen in US football players, boxers. military vets with evidence of a hit to the head like my father the Vietnam Vet, also physically abused spouses & family members with evidence of being hit in the head, it may not need to be a concussion to cause the tau protein pathology that leads to CTE & dementia and mutant tau is also the culprit in FTD so it can be hard to tell whether someone has CTE, FTD or both without a post mortem autopsy & life history)
The socially aware mature frontal lobes of the brain (right behind your forehead) lose their function & painful stuff will get said. The person with dementia is no longer capable of either empathy (realizing their effect on another human being) or reining their thoughts & emotions in.
This is very painful & embarrassing for the family members of someone with one of these illnesses (whether you are on the receiving end of the outburst or have to apologize to someone else who just got subjected to it) and even a well trained professional caregiver can have a bad day because people living with dementia also have bad days and good days. Like the rest of us.
It is true that by age 85 1 out of 2 Americans likely has a dementia. They may not have a diagnosis, but they can be showing all the signs of the illness.
My hope is that someday people at least realize that dementias are not all Alzheimers & 'memory problems'. That they can strike people as early as their 20s and 30s (these are largely inherited genetic variations running in families) and that people in their 40s 50s & 60s better learn the signs of dementia beyond 'memory issues' because early onset dementias (symptoms showing up before age 60) are increasingly a thing.
Anyway this last prejudice needs to die already. I feel for this person's family because they don't deserve this.
That the care people need now (and will massively need soon because in the next 15 years we are on track for 1 out of 2 American families to be dealing with a person living with dementia) and soon will be understood to be not cut poison or burn like it is for cancers but a much more compassionate response from people who do not have dementia.
That paid caregivers get way more respect (& pay) than the lazy primary care physicians who barely administer a simple 2 page written MMSE test, prescribe drugs without knowing which dementia the person may have, & refer them fast to others to rid themselves of the problematic responsibility of having someone who is going to die on their hands (not soon but they're pitied & ignored rather than acknowledged as ill fellow human beings).
That families of people with dementia need a hell of a lot more support too and to not be ostracized & socially isolated like the person with dementia will be and that the family caregiver at least get Social Security credit for taking this on assuming we don't figure out a way to pay them while they do this socially necessary job.
That insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, whatever we come up with for people under 65 & are not destitute) pay for maintaining people living with dementia in the community (their homes if they want, or more enlightened places than the overpriced medicalized prison-like warehouses we currently consign them to) and that we stop making anyone who comes into contact with a person with dementia into a pariah by association.
That we pay for art therapy, music therapy, pet therapy, speech therapy (helps keep them eating & swallowing longer), physical & occupational therapy, palliative care, hospice programs, companionship, respite care, adult day care (or it's nighttime equivalent for people with dementia who are up all night because their body clocks are failing too), training for family caregivers and pros and not for bogus drugs, psych meds, lockdowns & general ignorant Cuckoo's Nest bullshit. If we find stuff that works through further research (new drugs, surgeries etc) fine but that does fuck-all for someone with a diagnosis right now (or their families).
I have no idea who this is, but it could be any one of us once we hit a certain amount of wear & tear on our brains. Or one of our relatives or friends or loved ones.
I write because I am sick to death of this last socially acceptable prejudice against people who are too sick & by the very nature of their illness incapable of defending themselves & because those who know them best & could say what I am saying here are too damned busy doing their best to spend what quality time they have left living with a person who has dementia caring for them & helping them land as softly as they can from this most cruel & fatal of health blows,
We've already lost, how dare you kick & ostracize us further for something that is not anyone's fault? It's a disease not a moral failing. We've stopped making judgments against people who get cancer & AIDS, depression, substance abuse & mental illnesses. Now it's time to do the same for dementia.
Thank you so much for writing this. I helped take care of my Dad for 2 years before he died & it was a very scary, often lonely process. You helped sum things up very well. <3
As a former caregiver to a mother with dementia, it can bring a big swing in personality that can be hard to deal with. My mother who was always a steady mellow co-operative social person who became anti-social, would get angry and frustrated and hard to deal with but then I think you have to understand that part of the person knows something is wrong with them and the other part of the person doesn't or can't admit to it. Once on the right meds she was more like her old self. You can also see some people become psychotic, that happened to a friend's father and our local health care system doesn't have many places to put those people institutionally. The father was a former boxer so he had the potential even at his age to hurt someone badly. Dementia comes in more forms that most of us realize.
Absolutely, categorically, not Carl Reiner or Mel Brooks. I worked for Rob Reiner for years, and Carl Reiner is one of the best & brightest men ever to grace show business. Ditto Mel Brooks. Both of them devoted family men, incredibly sharp, students of human nature, deeply decent individuals. No how, no way.
Stan Lee
ReplyDeletePolice were at his house this week over a possible assault to him/from him? I can’t remember exactly
DeleteKirk Douglas?
ReplyDeleteLet us get back to focusing on "mostly television."
ReplyDelete👏👏👏👏
DeleteRobert Wagner
ReplyDeleteIsn't this everyone's grandfather at some point? lol
ReplyDeleteGeorge Jefferson
ReplyDeleteChevy Chase is known to be... but I’d say he’s perm A film
ReplyDeleteWilliam Shatner
ReplyDeleteArchie Bunker - the real Archie Bunker I mean.
ReplyDeleteChevy chase
ReplyDeleteKirk Douglas?
ReplyDeleteThe Real Archie Bunker is dead
ReplyDeleteCarl Reiner?
ReplyDeleteIf his twitter feed is any indication, no.
DeleteChristopher Lloyd?
ReplyDeleteThis woudn’t be a problem if undesirables would stay off of his lawn.
ReplyDelete"Caregivers." "Mostly TV." "You know from his movies." That rules out Reiner and Douglas, Chase (Does he have caregivers?). Shatner seems right on the edge of "maybe." Does he have caregivers?
ReplyDeleteLook, in the last few years of elderly life the brain breaks down. People that never said a cuss word will start being very vulgar. Paid professional health professionals know this and accept it. Not saying they like it, but they understand the reasons behind the ugly behavior.
ReplyDelete+1
DeleteSorry - seeing my father pass away in his 90s and hearing what came out of his mouth near the end, I give a hard pass to expecting what is said at that point to be consistent with their character. I know my dad normally did not think walls were made out of peanut butter.
ReplyDeleteDick van Dyke - very old, mostly television, known from Mary Poppins and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.
ReplyDeleteAgree with everyone else who is or was a caregiver to someone in their nineties. But maybe the point was he always was racist.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteI knew an old man who developed a hatred of christmas trees towards the end, he was convinced they were going to burn down his house.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteZantiMissKnit - I agree. It must be Dick Van Dyke. Mostly TV, and has some movies.
ReplyDelete@Ernie McCracken Yes, just ask the real-and-not-in-law son, Meathead.
ReplyDeleteYea, my dad was convinced we were keeping his money from him and was obsessed with dental floss.
ReplyDelete
ReplyDeleteDementia is not uncommon after 80. This person may have no idea what they are saying.
This comment has been removed by the author.
ReplyDeleteif you read clearly - "caregiver" - that means a family member or paid helper who regularly looks after a child or a sick, elderly, or disabled person."
ReplyDeleteWhat Famous mostly TV actor is sick or disabled or old and ready to die?
Going with Stan Lee
ReplyDeleteIf anyone wants to start telling me what TV shows made actor Stan Lee a permanent A list actor who we know from movies let me know. I'll be here all weekend. He draws comic books people, that's where he gets his legendary status, nowhere else. I DGAF what tv show he cameos on as himself.
ReplyDeleteThe "real" Archie Bunker was Carroll O'Connor and he hated saying the racist stuff, so he argued with Norman Lear all the time about the script. Norman said it on his recent special. I think DVD is too healthy to be the guy, same with Chase.
ReplyDeleteEd Asner? :(
ReplyDeleteHe’s still pretty sharp on twitter
DeleteBob Newhart? But other than Elf, not sure what movies people would know him from.
ReplyDeleteHal Holbrook?
ReplyDeleteGeorge H. W Bush.
ReplyDeleteNot a television star.
ReplyDeleteHahahaha +1 sandybrook! The whole time I was reading, that's all I could think of! #payattentiontotheclues
ReplyDeleteCarl Reiner
ReplyDeleteThose are some weirdly specific clues, and Dick Van Dyke seems to be the best fit!
ReplyDeleteAs a professional caregiver you see this all the time, sounds like these caregivers were not so professional to me or were mortally offended.
ReplyDeleteThe person who fits this best unfortunately is Mel Brooks. We know him more for movies but he is also permanent A list for his tv career before his movies.
ReplyDeleteOh God I hope not Mel.
DeleteIn his case, I doubt he was secretly racist all along. Closet bigots usually try to act more-tolerant-than-thou, but he made FUN of everything. True bigots don't dare to do that.
So if he is saying weird things, it's his brain fizzling out. I've seen complete transformations in people who are very sick and old. It's their true selves being LOST, not coming out.
Don't want to think that about van dyke I hope it's not him! Isn't newhart dead?
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, Reiner and Van Dyke are the ones that fit this best, IMO. I'll go with Van Dyke, since he's recently in the news for his brother's death.
ReplyDeleteI think Rob Reiner would be pissed at his father if he treated folks this way (unless it's dementia; that shit is totally unpredictable).
Who is Burt Reynolds?
ReplyDeleteI'll take "send him to argentina" for 600
Kirk Douglas and Stan Lee are 'permanent A list mostly Tv actors' we know from movies. Read the blinds, people! Stan, not a director. Kirk, not mostly TV. Reiner might fit in that he was mostly TV as an actor but we know him from movies.
ReplyDeleteLivia Soprano?
ReplyDelete@Sandybrook. Maybe so. But I refuse to believe it. I believe it of Dick Van Dyke.
ReplyDeleteFormer family caregiver to a father with dementia here (he died in November of 2015, in his own home on hospice, my task took 10 years & 5 months to complete).
ReplyDeletePlease allow me to school y'all.
People back in the day were raised with more racist & other -ist beliefs. We have (theoretically) progressed socially, or at least enough to watch what we say around one another assuming our brains are functioning reasonably well.
If an older person gets dementia (and that is ***not*** normal aging but brain failure & death), those thoughts will come out. Especially with Fronto-Temporal Dementia (the so called behavioral variant in particular) or CTE (being seen in US football players, boxers. military vets with evidence of a hit to the head like my father the Vietnam Vet, also physically abused spouses & family members with evidence of being hit in the head, it may not need to be a concussion to cause the tau protein pathology that leads to CTE & dementia and mutant tau is also the culprit in FTD so it can be hard to tell whether someone has CTE, FTD or both without a post mortem autopsy & life history)
The socially aware mature frontal lobes of the brain (right behind your forehead) lose their function & painful stuff will get said. The person with dementia is no longer capable of either empathy (realizing their effect on another human being) or reining their thoughts & emotions in.
This is very painful & embarrassing for the family members of someone with one of these illnesses (whether you are on the receiving end of the outburst or have to apologize to someone else who just got subjected to it) and even a well trained professional caregiver can have a bad day because people living with dementia also have bad days and good days. Like the rest of us.
It is true that by age 85 1 out of 2 Americans likely has a dementia. They may not have a diagnosis, but they can be showing all the signs of the illness.
My hope is that someday people at least realize that dementias are not all Alzheimers & 'memory problems'. That they can strike people as early as their 20s and 30s (these are largely inherited genetic variations running in families) and that people in their 40s 50s & 60s better learn the signs of dementia beyond 'memory issues' because early onset dementias (symptoms showing up before age 60) are increasingly a thing.
Anyway this last prejudice needs to die already. I feel for this person's family because they don't deserve this.
Here's what I dream of:
ReplyDeleteThat the care people need now (and will massively need soon because in the next 15 years we are on track for 1 out of 2 American families to be dealing with a person living with dementia) and soon will be understood to be not cut poison or burn like it is for cancers but a much more compassionate response from people who do not have dementia.
That paid caregivers get way more respect (& pay) than the lazy primary care physicians who barely administer a simple 2 page written MMSE test, prescribe drugs without knowing which dementia the person may have, & refer them fast to others to rid themselves of the problematic responsibility of having someone who is going to die on their hands (not soon but they're pitied & ignored rather than acknowledged as ill fellow human beings).
That families of people with dementia need a hell of a lot more support too and to not be ostracized & socially isolated like the person with dementia will be and that the family caregiver at least get Social Security credit for taking this on assuming we don't figure out a way to pay them while they do this socially necessary job.
That insurance (Medicare, Medicaid, ACA, whatever we come up with for people under 65 & are not destitute) pay for maintaining people living with dementia in the community (their homes if they want, or more enlightened places than the overpriced medicalized prison-like warehouses we currently consign them to) and that we stop making anyone who comes into contact with a person with dementia into a pariah by association.
That we pay for art therapy, music therapy, pet therapy, speech therapy (helps keep them eating & swallowing longer), physical & occupational therapy, palliative care, hospice programs, companionship, respite care, adult day care (or it's nighttime equivalent for people with dementia who are up all night because their body clocks are failing too), training for family caregivers and pros and not for bogus drugs, psych meds, lockdowns & general ignorant Cuckoo's Nest bullshit. If we find stuff that works through further research (new drugs, surgeries etc) fine but that does fuck-all for someone with a diagnosis right now (or their families).
I have no idea who this is, but it could be any one of us once we hit a certain amount of wear & tear on our brains. Or one of our relatives or friends or loved ones.
I write because I am sick to death of this last socially acceptable prejudice against people who are too sick & by the very nature of their illness incapable of defending themselves & because those who know them best & could say what I am saying here are too damned busy doing their best to spend what quality time they have left living with a person who has dementia caring for them & helping them land as softly as they can from this most cruel & fatal of health blows,
We've already lost, how dare you kick & ostracize us further for something that is not anyone's fault? It's a disease not a moral failing. We've stopped making judgments against people who get cancer & AIDS, depression, substance abuse & mental illnesses. Now it's time to do the same for dementia.
WOW. Thank you VDO!
DeleteBeautiful presentation of facts and ideas VDO! My Mom died of Alzheimers five months ago... awful experience in so so many aspects.
DeleteThank you so much for writing this. I helped take care of my Dad for 2 years before he died & it was a very scary, often lonely process. You helped sum things up very well. <3
DeleteYou get a standing ovation VDOVault.
ReplyDeleteCarl Reiner is a closet racist? Nah. And no one knows him from movies. I'm going with the Texas Ranger himself. I know, the ads, but he's nearly 80.
ReplyDeleteBeau Bridges
ReplyDeleteAs a former caregiver to a mother with dementia, it can bring a big swing in personality that can be hard to deal with. My mother who was always a steady mellow co-operative social person who became anti-social, would get angry and frustrated and hard to deal with but then I think you have to understand that part of the person knows something is wrong with them and the other part of the person doesn't or can't admit to it. Once on the right meds she was more like her old self. You can also see some people become psychotic, that happened to a friend's father and our local health care system doesn't have many places to put those people institutionally. The father was a former boxer so he had the potential even at his age to hurt someone badly. Dementia comes in more forms that most of us realize.
ReplyDeleteAbsolutely, categorically, not Carl Reiner or Mel Brooks. I worked for Rob Reiner for years, and Carl Reiner is one of the best & brightest men ever to grace show business. Ditto Mel Brooks. Both of them devoted family men, incredibly sharp, students of human nature, deeply decent individuals. No how, no way.
ReplyDelete