Gary Busey on Celebrity Apprentice: Laughing at Disability or Living with It

I watch Celebrity Apprentice.

Ugh. I know. I hate myself for it.

Almost as much as I hate Donald Trump.

HAAAAATE.

But I like the task element. I like Penn Jillette. But mostly the task element.

One thing I'm not sure about is how I feel about the inclusion of Gary Busey in the series.

Busey clearly is there for comic relief. The whole point of this week's episode, where Busey is Project Manager, is that it is going to be wacky! This ad for the show pretty much shows how the series treats the man.

Look, I love laughing at celebrities. The Justin Bieber/Anne Frank thing? Ah-Maz-Balls. I watch Celebrity Rehab. I watch Wife Swap. I have been watching the fever dream that is Splash.

But Busey on Celebrity Apprentice...it just strikes me as wrong.

It's because of my history watching marginal television that I know that Busey has a traumatic brain injury that causes his lack of impulse control.

As the far superior blog Videogum said:

Oh wait, does the entire Internet still get to laugh at him constantly? Is he still funny? What’s your favorite thing about him? The way that he continues to live with the devastating impact of traumatic brain injury the best he can while local car companies pay him to make absurdist commercials and people ostensibly free of traumatic brain injuries take two seconds out of their day to leave casually tossed off rude comments about him on blogs for no particular reason other than raw and persistent boredom before returning to masturbation? What is the funniest part though?! He’s so weird and crazy, right? Is that the funniest part? Hahahahahah!

And that is pretty much my problem with Busey's appearances on Celebrity Apprentice. This isn't a guy just being wacky because he is out of touch with real life as a result of being a celebrity. He has actual brain damage.

On the other hand, there is something weirdly powerful about how nobody talks about Busey's handicap directly. He's just Gary being Gary. His team members have to work around it but in the process they have to accept him and his limits.

And isn't that sort of how we want people with disability to be treated? Not locked away from sight. Not pitied. Just there and accepted. When a visually impaired home chef  won Masterchef it was great. The show didn't cut her slack because of her disability (they allowed her to have an assistant to describe visual things, such as what the dishes looked like that they had to emulate but she didn't have extra time to compensate for the fact that picking a ripe piece of fruit took longer since it involved having to have someone describe the color of it). It served as a great message to people who watch the show who may be concerned about how to treat someone with a disability in their workplace or social life.

And, sure, it is different than watching Gary Busey be laughed at because of his brain injury. But what is the solution? Busey's injury means that he acts in ways that are unexpected and funny, even though the reason for his actions is quite serious. But having lived with a Grandmother with dementia...the only way to live with it is humor. Laughing at the situation doesn't mean laughing at the person.

And I'm still not sure what to do about the Busey issue? Is the show laughing at Busey's disability and making it acceptable to mock what he can't control? Or is it helping to show that people with disabilities are still good people and can be very helpful in a workplace situation? Is the show laughing at the disability, or simply showing what it is like to live with it?