Controversial columnist Katie Hopkins is not adverse to the throw away comment, or to condemning everyone from refugees, those struggling with body issues, and people living with mental illness.
Unfortunately, as a Sun columnist, she has a platform for her often classist, racist, sexist and derogatory missives.
Her latest?
A derogatory Tweet made about British Opposition Leader – Edward Miliband during the latest leaders debate in the UK.
Hopkins referred to Miliband looking into the camera, addressing his public audience, as him being on “the spectrum”.
ED STOP LOOKING AT US. You are weird. Look at people not a machine. Try and act off the spectrum #leadersdebate
— Katie Hopkins (@KTHopkins) April 2, 2015
In an open letter, Lucy Hawking, daughter of Stephen Hawking (who also has a son with Autism), has addressed the danger of Hopkins’ views around disabilities being accepted and proliferated through her public profile.
In her letter, published on The Guardian, Hawking discusses the stigma experienced at the hands of the public, against her father, when she was young.
“We had many difficult moments, such as the time a restaurant manager asked us to leave while we were in the middle of lunch because we were putting the other diners off their food,” she wrote.
She follows by likening the consistent prejudice to “growing up with a whole world of people like you [Hopkins], everywhere, all the time”.
In her letter Hawking pleaded for Hopkins to consider the damage that her words can cause to people in the disable community, and those who love them.
“It just takes a figure like you to validate the bullies’ point of view – and who knows how terrible the outcomes could be. There are lots of kids out there with disabled parents or siblings whose lives just got harder because of you,” she wrote.
