Able-bodied journalists express curiosity and sympathy about disabled people but when it comes down to doing stories about them, invariably the news media highlight their "heroic" qualities -- ignoring their far more mundane and pragmatic concerns. PNS commentator Mark O'Brien is a poet and writer based in Berkeley, Ca., who spends most of his days in an iron lung.

When two national news programs asked to interview me on being disabled I agreed -- partly out of vanity, partly because I wanted people to know the truth. If there's anything I'm an expert on, it's disability. The polio that hit me 39 years ago paralyzed all my limbs. I spend my days in an iron lung, a machine that helps me breathe.

But instead of informing their audience about the realities of my life -- my poverty, my need for attendant care programs, my joblessness -- both "All Things Considered" and "The Crusaders" focused on my supposed heroic character. Able-bodied journalists who had expressed sympathy and curiosity about my disabilities wound up perpetuating a myth that did nothing to help me or other disabled people.

The myth is that the disabled person "overcomes" his or her disability through sheer force of character, will power or guts. This is a variation on the basic American myth of the rugged individual.

The rugged individual conquered the frontier, cleared the land, started a farm and raised a family -- all by himself. Yes, himself. For the rugged individual is male, white and English-speaking. Perhaps embarrassed by the sexist and ethnocentric implications of this figure, those who believe the myth take special delight in searching out living examples among Latinos, blacks and disabled people.

Many able-bodied people also feel uncomfortable in the presence of disabled people. We are the undead. Alive, but functioning without some power the able-bodied consider essential to life. We seem to astonish them merely by surviving. But instead of admitting that they'd rather be dead than disabled -- which would not be polite -- able-bodied people praise us for what they perceive as our "courage." I giggle at the absurdity of this misplaced praise, knowing full well that able-bodied people need to distance themselves from our experience.

Nature makes certain arbitrary decisions. Some people can walk, others cannot. Able-bodied people do not want to be reminded, after all, that they are one accident, one virus, one gene away from being disabled themselves.

Society, too, of course, makes arbitrary decisions about who is and who is not disabled. Thus, I am disabled because I need help to get through the day. But Bob Dole, who has a paralyzed right arm and also needs assistants to get through the day, can pass as able-bodied.

Rather than deal with the irrationality of such distinctions, able-bodied people prefer to put us on pedestals while ignoring our political and economic concerns. We become the heroes of the rugged individual myth Americans have adored since the days of James Fenimore Cooper. Hawkeye lives! Not only in MASH reruns but in the way most Americans see disabled people. The myth allows able-bodied people to think of themselves as open-minded and optimistic in the presence of the undead.

Meanwhile we, the disabled, aren't getting much out of the myth. Contrary to the image of gutsy self-reliant individuals, we continue to be oppressed by laws that discourage our independence and encourage our dependence on expensive nursing homes. The absence of decent attendant care programs in many states is no accident but rather the deliberate result of aggressive lobbying by the nursing home industry.

I've told this story twice to able-bodied journalists in recent months. Twice it hit the cutting room floor. What remained? The usual stuff, how brave I am, how courageous I am.

I am as vain as anyone else. I will not sue these journalists for defaming me as a hero. But I would like to see the real story come out.