Physicist Stephen Hawking’s daughter Lucy has spoken up about bullying against people with physical or mental disabilities by writing a personal letter to TV personality Katie Hopkins and urging her to “stop making fun of disabled people.”
The Sun columnist has once again generated some buzz after she made her latest controversial comment, saying that Labour leader Ed Miliband resembled “someone on the spectrum.”
Lucy’s cosmologist father has been wheelchair-bound for the past decades due to his motor-neuron disease whereas her son also suffers from autism.
Sending her letter to the Guardian newspaper, Lucy expressed her sentiments on supporting and standing up for people with disabilities. She called out Hopkins, in particular, for making offensive jokes.
"I read with great sadness your 'jokes' (are they jokes? I don't even know?) about Ed Milliband,” Lucy wrote.
She further explained that she sometimes has to make an apology to people on the train when her son unintentionally stares at them. She also insisted that such strangers have always been sympathetic towards her when she explains to them that her son suffers from autism.
"But if he were staring at you, I presume it wouldn't be okay, that you would make a laughing stock out of him," she further wrote.
Professor Hawking’s daughter also claimed that Hopkins will likely be apathetic towards her son as well as to other individuals suffering from such disease.
"You would use his disability against him – and you wouldn't care how embarrassed, hurt or distressed he was,” Lucy wrote. “Because it wouldn't matter to you. Don't you think kids with autism have enough to deal with already?"
The novelist also went on to state that she has no idea about the amount of money being paid to Hopkins to share her “unreserved and trenchant views”, claiming that such sum is not enough.
Finally, Lucy predicted that the media spotlight will soon recognize such offensive acts and will eventually move on.
Meanwhile, Hopkins became more recognized on the third season of UK’s ‘The Apprentice’ for making frank remarks about women who preferred to take maternity leave as well as overweight individuals.
Since then, she boosted her career by incorporating controversial comments in her reporting. For instance, throughout different morning show appearances and even on her own Twitter account, she clearly stated that she “wouldn’t employ someone who was obese". The 40-year-old TV personality has even made the headlines for supporting the abuse of animals.
A response to Lucy’s open letter is yet to be provided by Hopkins.
