Michael J. Fox Honored With Bob Hope Humanitarian Award — SkimNews
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- Michael J. Fox received the Bob Hope Humanitarian Award at Monday's 78th Emmy Awards ceremony, hosted by Mariska Hargitay, for his Parkinson's disease advocacy through the Michael J. Fox Foundation.
- Julianna Margulies, Fox's co-star on The Good Wife, presented him with the award onstage.
- Fox explicitly modeled his post-diagnosis advocacy on Hope, noting Hope spent holidays with troops in Berlin, Saigon, and the Middle East — a tradition Fox said he learned from after initially hiding his Parkinson's diagnosis from audiences for fear they wouldn't laugh at his comedy.
- Fox told the crowd he was "proud of the progress we've made" through his foundation's Parkinson's research fundraising, then departed the stage in his wheelchair to a standing ovation.
- Fox has won five Emmys across his career — his first in 1986 for Family Ties and most recent in 2009 for Rescue Me.
Why it matters: Fox's foundation has raised money to find a Parkinson's cure, and his speech drew a direct line from Hope's tradition of supporting military families to his own work on behalf of Parkinson's patients — reframing a personal diagnosis as a public advocacy platform modeled on a prior generation's example.
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