Dance, dance, revolution

I'm sure by now you've heard about the dance team in Wisconsin that did a "crazy" routine, complete with fake straitjackets labeled "Psych Ward." There's a huge uproar in the mental health community over it. Twitter is all a fuss. So what happened here? It's nothing new. People just don't see mental illness as something that needs advocacy or understanding. It's still cool to call someone schizo or bipolar when they're doing something you don't like. It's still ok to portray the mentally ill as violent. Not that that's what these girls were doing, but they weren't helping. My favorite quote:

"It's such a contradiction, to have such compassion for cancer, and no compassion for mental illness. How many people sitting in that audience might have had a mental illness or had a loved one with a mental illness? And to have to sit through that ... It's not funny when you know somebody who's suffering."

It's nice that people are standing up and saying something. It's hard to say something about things like this, because you, or at least I, feel like a jackass speaking up. "Don't call people crazy!" seems like a battle cry that's not going anywhere but harassed for being too politically correct. Hell, I use the word crazy all the time. I'm not sure how I feel about it, but I hate when people misuse bipolar or schizo.

I'm glad to see these girls changed the wardrobe, but I hope they actually learned something. It doesn't seem like their coach did. She still says she doesn't see where we're coming from.