Michael J. Fox

The TV Watch
Making Stem Cell Issue Personal, and Political

By ALESSANDRA STANLEY
October 25, 2006

The plea is as disturbing — and arresting — as a hostage video from Iraq. In a navy blazer and preppy Oxford shirt, the actor Michael J. Fox calmly asks viewers to support stem cell research by voting for several Democratic candidates in Maryland, Missouri and Wisconsin, while his body sways back and forth uncontrollably like a sailor being tossed around in a full-force gale.

In short, Mr. Fox’s display of the toll Parkinson’s disease has taken on him turned into one of the most powerful and talked about political advertisements in years.

Republican strategists who saw how quickly the commercial was downloaded, e-mailed and reshown on news broadcasts certainly thought so. Rush Limbaugh rushed in to discredit Mr. Fox, though he mostly hurt himself. Mr. Limbaugh, the conservative radio talk show host, told his listeners that the actor either “didn’t take his medication or was acting.” Mr. Limbaugh later apologized for accusing Mr. Fox of exaggerating his symptoms, but said that “Michael J. Fox is allowing his illness to be exploited and in the process is shilling for a Democrat politician.”

Republicans cobbled together a response ad that did not mention Mr. Fox but attacked the ethics of embryonic stem cell research. It included testimonials by the actress Patricia Heaton (“Everybody Loves Raymond”) and James Caviezel, who played Jesus in Mel Gibson’s “Passion of the Christ.” At least in the advance version shown on YouTube last night, Mr. Caviezel’s introduction seemed either garbled or to be in Aramaic.

The issue of embryonic stem cell research is divisive, but Mr. Fox is not. And that is one reason his advertisement had such resonance. He is a popular actor who played a young conservative Republican on the sitcom “Family Ties.” His illness was diagnosed in 1991, but he kept it secret until 1998. In 2000, he told his fans that because of his illness, he had to quit the hit sitcom “Spin City.” He founded the Michael J. Fox Foundation to advance stem cell research, lobbied Congress and made commercials to rally support for his cause.

But he has rarely looked quite as infirm. Mr. Fox was recently a guest star on several episodes of the ABC drama “Boston Legal,” and, presumably thanks to medication, his symptoms there were less noticeable.

If Mr. Fox did forgo medication for the advertisement as Mr. Limbaugh suggested, it could hardly be considered fraudulent: if anything, masking the extent of the disease’s ravages is the deception, not revealing them. (A spokesman for Mr. Fox said his tremors were caused by his medication.) It was certainly the most dramatic way Mr. Fox has to personalize the issue; he used his infirmity much the way the late Christopher Reeve did when he lobbied for stem cell research to seek a cure for spinal injuries.

Debate over stem cell research is especially intense in Missouri, where voters are considering a measure that would amend the state’s Constitution to protect all federally allowed forms of the research, including embryonic stem cell research. Mr. Fox’s words in support of the Democratic Senate candidate, Claire McCaskill, were not nearly as forceful as his condemnation of her Republican opponent.

“Unfortunately, Senator Jim Talent opposes expanding stem cell research,” Mr. Fox says in the 30-second spot. “Senator Talent even wanted to criminalize the science that gives us a chance for hope.”

The Talent campaign protested Mr. Fox’s wording as misleading. “Senator Talent supports medical research including stem cell research that doesn’t involve cloning or destroying a human embryo,” said the candidate’s spokesman, Rich Chrismer.

But one reason candidates rely so heavily on 30-second spots is that they appeal to visceral emotion, not reason. In the recent past, it has been the Republican advertisements that have tended to be more bold and more memorable: the Willie Horton advertisements that George Bush used against Michael S. Dukakis in 1988 or the specter of stalking wolves that his son, George W. Bush, used to make Senator John Kerry seem weak on terrorism. Democrats usually have to go back to 1964 and Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Daisy” attack on Barry Goldwater to find comparably vivid ads. Until now, that is.

These are times in which most actors seem prepared to do anything, and pay any price, to disguise flaws that could harm their careers. So when a famous one exposes the full, frightening extent of his infirmity in the name of saving lives, it tends to get noticed.