A time warp, true enough, but the pitython is not locked into the past. Corporate America's accountants have found a category for charity somewhere above the bottom line, and the MDA repays the favor with a series of infomercials: Albertson's, CITGO, Anheuser-Busch and American Express, among others, got big chunks of air time for their millions.

And, if you watch the pitython long enough, you see they've learned to wring referential congratulations out of every last dollar. No honcho comes out and says, "We hate muscular dystrophy. Here's a million bucks to prove it," and then Gulfstreams off to the next merger conference.

No, the major players dole it out in chunks. During the hours I watched, the guys from ACOSTA and CITGO, and the woman representing Albertson's, were on so many times they began to blur together in my mind. The only guy on air more was International Association of Fire Fighters general president Harold Schaitberger, who trucked in enough checks to total $17 million.

But it's not the CEOs and the entertainers that upset most gimps. You can't get out of this world sane if you don't buy into the idea that most people want to do good, and so a wise person learns to judge slowly or not at all.

No, it's the incessant talk about dying rather than living. It's the "medical model," rather than promoting the idea that people with disabilities can live productive and happy lives. It's the identification of people as diseases rather than as fellow human beings with common hopes and ambitions and unique abilities.

But this year, Jerry had us beat. He had 12-year-old Mattie Stepanek, billed as "the world's bestselling living poet." No more "Poster Child" for the MDA. Mattie is the organization's national goodwill ambassador.

And, dear God, what a horse to ride. Stepanek has mitochondrial myopathy, a disease that has put him in a wheelchair and on a respirator because it messes up the ability to breathe and process oxygen. It also weakens muscles. That's his bona fides.

But the blue-eyed, blond-haired little guy with the big smile has been around, more than Jonathan Franzen even, with appearances on "Oprah" and on the New York Times bestseller list with his book of poetry, "Journey Through Heartsongs." And Stepanek is entirely at home on camera -- forthright, eloquent and able to hold his own in an interview, and capable even of discussing his own mortality without being maudlin.

It was nearly enough to make me want to burn my picket sign.

But then came a hauntingly compelling moment. For some reason, the producers -- surely not Jerry himself -- chose to rebroadcast a portion of CNN's Larry King interview with Lewis that aired last week as publicity for the pitython geared up. No crip activist would have expected King to ask the hard questions, but sometimes things just fall in your lap.

Lewis' young daughter had called the King show, and Jerry seemed genuinely surprised she'd been able to navigate the telephone system to reach him. It's easy to tell that Lewis delights in his daughter, and all went well until King asked the girl how she felt about her father's significant weight gain. She was confused by the question for a moment, but King pressed on, and she finally ended up saying, "sad."

Lewis flinched, and he ducked his head, his mouth turning sharply down. God, I thought, maybe the man does understand pity hurts. Maybe he has crossed over.

But I will never know. The nutty professor is a subject worthy of analysis either by Freud or H.L. Mencken, but much too easy a target for my anger.

I am too wrapped up in my own angry response when I am disparaged by pity. And I continue to move about in a society where people with disabilities are left to fight their own battles as progressives organize for the rights of labor, people of color, feminists, gay/lesbian people, prisoners on death row and a hundred other causes.

I didn't learn much from the telethon, and I didn't give a dime. I did come to believe Lewis is so much the character he occupies that we will never comprehend if his emotional reactions are real. I know he hates neuromuscular diseases, but I don't know if he hates me because I'm a "half-person -- a cripple in a wheelchair."

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