And the And now the good fight with Yasha Monk.

My name is Seth Moskowitz and I'm an associate editor at Persuasion.

I wrote an article this week called Talking about Pederman, stroke is not ableism, which is about John Federman, the Democratic

candidate for Senate in Pennsylvania who had a stroke in May.

Federman's health condition came into the national news this week because of an interview that he did with NBC.

In that interview, Federman used a software on a computer in front of him that transcribed the questions he was being asked so he could read them because he was having difficulty with something called auditory processing.

But that itself isn't what actually brought Federman's condition into the national news. What did that were comments by the reporter

when she was introducing the segment in which she said that Pederman was having difficulty

understanding what she was saying when they were

chatting before they interview. And this is what caused the storm of

criticism from activists and journalists who called that reporter ableist. But what

they were really trying to do was to shut down any conversation about

Federman's condition and how it might impact his job in the Senate. But this is a

ridiculous thing to do. It's perfectly acceptable for reporters to be reporting on

candidates health conditions and it's also perfectly acceptable for reporters to

be reporting on a candidates health status and it's an important thing for voters to know about.

Unfortunately some people did go too far and make jokes at Federman's expense

like Fox News is Tucker Carlson and Mehmet Oz and this is obviously unacceptable

but that doesn't mean that all talk about Federman's disability should be out of

bounds or treated as a taboo. Candidates should be as transparent as possible about their health status and what will mean for their work once they're elected.

Because this is something that voters deserve to know about.

I hope you'll give my article a read and let me know what you think.

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