Someone please tell Barbara Walters of The View that having Type 1 diabetes does not make you an alcoholic. It is statements like this whereby this blog was born.
Of course any sane human being knows that having Type 1 diabetes does not make you an alcoholic, except if that human being is Barbara Walters. She had the nerve to ask Mary Tyler Moore, a woman with Type 1 diabetes for over 40 years, “Did having diabetes make you an alcoholic?” on Thursday morning’s The View.
Ridiculous use of words, or misuse of words, like this are the exact reason for this blog. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that Barbara Walters was trying to ask Ms. Moore if having to deal with a chronic illness for over 1/2 of her life may have caused her to start using alcohol as a coping mechanism. Unfortunately, that is not what she said.
Had Ms. Walters chosen her words more wisely, maybe Ms. Moore could have had an intelligent conversation regarding Type 1 diabetes. Instead the interview was taken down to a level below mediocrity where Ms. Walters asked inane questions such as the above one regarding alcoholism.
Had Ms. Walters focused on how to live successfully with Type 1 diabetes then some people may have learned something. Instead she single-handedly created another myth about Type 1 diabetes that my son will have to debunk for the rest of his life.
Now the saddest part about all of this nonsense, is that someone who is undereducated about Type 1 diabetes now has more misinformation swimming around their head. Someone out there, one day in the future, is going to tell my son to be careful when he drinks a beer at his 21st birthday, because having Type 1 diabetes may make him prone to alcoholism.
I think Barbara Walters owes all of the people living with Type 1 diabetes an apology. She should be ashamed about how little she knew about Type 1 diabetes before the interview. She should be even more ashamed at how less people know after watching her poor excuse for an interview.