The scene in Wednesday’s episode of the hit Fox series “Glee,” which regularly celebrates diversity and the underdog, is yet another uplifting moment – except to those in the entertainment industry with disabilities and their advocates.

For them, the casting of a non-disabled actor to play the paraplegic high school student is another blown chance to hire a performer who truly fits the role.

“I think there’s a fear of litigation, that a person with disabilities might slow a production down, fear that viewers might be uncomfortable,” said Robert David Hall, longtime cast member of CBS’ “CSI: Crime Scene Investigation.”

All of that is nonsense, said Hall: “I’ve made my living as an actor for 30 years and I walk on two artificial legs.”

Hall, 61, chair of a multi-union committee for performers with disabilities, is part of a small band of such steadily working actors on TV that includes Daryl “Chill” Mitchell, star of Fox’s “Brothers”; teenager RJ Mitte of AMC’s “Breaking Bad”; and ABC’s “Private Practice” newcomer Michael Patrick Thornton.

Veteran actress Geri Jewell, who has cerebral palsy, appeared on HBO’s now-departed “Deadwood.”

Mitchell, 44, whose credits included “Veronica’s Closet” and the film “Galaxy Quest” before he was injured in a motorcycle accident and “Ed” after he began using a wheelchair, is also a producer on the Sunday sitcom that’s in need of higher ratings if it is to survive.

For Mitchell, “Brothers” represents more than just another show: He calls it “a movement” that deserves support from the wider disabled community as well as the industry.

“This is what my life is. This is what I want the world to see,” he said. “I want to hold the networks accountable. If I can come out and do what I’m doing, they can come to the table.”

It’s not just TV that falls short of what Mitchell and others seek, including auditioning those with disabilities for roles that echo their situation and for roles in which it is irrelevant. (Then it’s up to them to prove they deserve the job, Hall said.)

In the theater world, advocacy groups for the disabled recently objected to the casting of Abigail Breslin (”Little Miss Sunshine”) as young Helen Keller in a Broadway revival of “The Miracle Worker,” and a hearing actor’s selection for a deaf role in the off-Broadway “The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter.”

In films, Daniel Day-Lewis received an Academy Award for his portrayal of a man with severe cerebral palsy in “My Left Foot” and Tom Cruise was nominated for an Oscar for playing a paralyzed Vietnam veteran in “Born on the Fourth of July.”

Television, however, has a unique place in the country’s cultural and social fiber. It deals in volume, is entrenched in most lives as it consumes hours of leisure time and has the daily power to reinforce attitudes or reshape them. Increasingly, it’s been expected to reflect America in whole and not just the so-called mainstream.

That was the intent in assembling the cast of “Glee,” said executive producer Brad Falchuk, along with getting the best performers possible.

“We brought in anyone: white, black, Asian, in a wheelchair,” he said. “It was very hard to find people who could really sing, really act, and have that charisma you need on TV.”

He understands the concern and frustration expressed by the disabled community, he said. But Kevin McHale, 21, who plays Artie, excels as an actor and singer and “it’s hard to say no to someone that talented,” Falchuk said.

“Glee” isn’t alone in using an able-bodied actor for a wheelchair role: “Curb Your Enthusiasm” did it twice in a recent episode.

While TV has grown more inclusive of ethnic and gay characters, those with disabilities represent a sizable minority that hasn’t fared as well – whether with genuine or fake portrayals.

About one-fifth of Americans age 5 to 64 have a physical or mental disability – more than 50 million, according to U.S. Census figures. But fewer than 2 percent of the characters on TV reflect that reality, according to a 2005 study of Screen Actors Guild members conducted by researchers at the University of California, Los Angeles.

And it’s not a small playing field: There are 600 characters or more on the scripted comedies and dramas airing on the five major networks in a typical season.

More than a third of performers with disabilities reported facing discrimination in the workplace, either being refused an audition or not being cast for a role because of their disability, the study found. Many performers fear being candid about their health or needs to avoid pity or being seen as incapable of doing a job.

There can be added production expenses, said veteran casting director Sheila Manning, such as hiring a translator for a performer who is deaf.

“It costs a little more, but look at the positive reaction they’re (the networks) getting. I think that more than offsets the cost,” Manning said, adding that it’s the morally right thing to do.

And producers simply can’t complain of a shallow pool of choices.

“There are very talented performers with disabilities. … We just don’t know what producers are thinking,” said Gloria Castaneda, program director of the Media Access Office, a California state program that promotes hiring of the disabled in the entertainment industry. It also gives annual awards for positive portrayals.

The cause has union support: A campaign sponsored by three major entertainment guilds and aimed at creating equal employment opportunities for actors, broadcasters and recording artists just marked its first year.

TV’s past, oddly enough, was brighter. In the 1980s, actors with disabilities could be seen regularly in a variety of shows. They included Jewell, who costarred on “Facts of Life,” and James Stacy, who played a love interest for Sharon Gless on “Cagney & Lacey” and appeared in “Wiseguy” after losing limbs in a motorcycle crash.

R.J. Johnson, a writer and filmmaker, documented the golden period in “Breaking Ground.” Among those interviewed in the film was an actress who proclaimed, “We’re never going back. It won’t happen.”

Johnson says that “everything aligned” to encourage producers and directors such as Michael Landon (”Highway to Heaven”) to create characters with disabilities and then hire the right actors to play them.

“Then it kind of faded away,” says casting pro Manning. “It was a cause, and then it wasn’t.”

But she sounded a note of optimism, saying, “It’s in the public consciousness again, so it’s in the production consciousness.”

A friend was on the mind of Vince Gilligan, executive director of “Breaking Bad,” when the role of Walter Jr. was formed. Gilligan said he was thinking of a dear college pal, a man “with an infectious personality,” who died in recent years.

“It must have been I wanted to represent him in such a fashion when I created the character of Walter Jr.,” Gilligan told a recent industry forum on the hiring and portrayal of people with disabilities. “There was no reason for him to have cerebral palsy. It just seemed like, ‘Why Not?’ There’s no better reason than that, I suppose.”

More is at stake than actors’ careers, say advocates.

“When a person with a disability sees a positive image on TV that looks like them, their whole attitude changes. It gives them hope for what they can do in the future,” said Castaneda of the Media Access Office.

It counts for their families as well, said veteran writer Janis Hirsch, who works on Fox’s “Brothers” and “‘Til Death,” and who had polio as an infant.

“I am sick and tired of my son not seeing anyone even remotely like me on TV,” she said. “The first time my son saw someone use forearm crutches was the giraffe puppet in ‘Lion King.’ He was so excited. Where else do you see it? You just don’t see it.”

Wanda Sykes’ weekly Fox comedy show debuts 11 p.m. EST Saturday, followed by George Lopez’s four-night-a-week talk show on TBS, starting 11 p.m. EST Monday. They join “The Mo’Nique Show” on BET.

Lopez is counting on an audience hungry for something different – as in the first Hispanic to host a nighttime talk show on a major network, cable or broadcast.

Sykes is the first black late-night host since the late 1990s, when celebrities Earvin “Magic” Johnson and Keenan Ivory Wayans tried and failed to follow in Arsenio Hall’s successful 1989-94 footsteps.

“There’s a huge percentage of people not watching late-night TV at all,” Lopez said, figuring that the shows headlined by hosts including David Letterman, Conan O’Brien and Jimmy Kimmel draw from roughly the same audience pool.

For people of color, the actor and comedian said, “I don’t think a lot of their needs are met with the current talk shows. I would pull a different audience.”

Shari Anne Brill, an analyst with media-buyer Carat USA in New York, echoes Lopez’s assertion.

“There is a huge, growing multicultural population in this country, and the current late-night fare doesn’t really take them into account,” she said.

But neither Lopez nor Sykes are talking about practicing exclusionary TV. Lopez’s ABC sitcom drew a cross-section of viewers, and Sykes said she expects her show to attract the same mixed crowd she gets at her standup appearances.

“Young, old, male, female, all races, gay, straight. I love the audience that I draw,” Sykes said.

She rebuts the idea she got the job because of her gender, ethnicity or sexual orientation (the actress-comedian, who appears on CBS’ “The New Adventures of Old Christine,” came out as gay in 2008).

“I do understand the importance of being on a late-night talk show as a black, gay woman. But I’ve been at this for 20 years. I don’t think they (networks) were saying, `Hey, it would be fun to get a black woman on late-night. Who fits that role?’

“I got this show in spite of being a black lesbian,” she said, adding that viewers will tune in to see her or Lopez and not a type.

“It’s all driven by the host. It’s not what you’re getting from a minority, it’s us,” Sykes said.

She doesn’t see an “Obama effect” in the sudden late-night diversity, given that she was approached before the election of the first African-American U.S. president. But Lopez said his interest was piqued as he campaigned for the Democratic candidate.

“Being with Barack for a year and seeing the people and how their eyes and their faces filled with hope for him, for this country … and, on a very smaller scale, to have a show that is fun and can galvanize people and bring them together” was appealing, he said.

The two shows, as sketched by their hosts, will take different approaches.

Lopez promises to bring “the party back to late-night,” signaling a looser, hipper hour in the tradition of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” said analyst Bill Carroll of media buyer Katz Television in New York. Sykes is planning Bill Maher-type panels with both lighthearted and serious discussion of politics and culture as part of her mix.

“In some ways, these shows are looking at breaking the mold,” Carroll said. “Lopez Tonight,” he suggests, could be “what late-night might look like in the future.”

Sykes, whose show replaces Fox’s “Mad TV,” could compete successfully in her partial overlap with NBC’s “Saturday Night Live,” analyst Brill said. “Viewers could watch her show and then switch to `SNL’ in time for the news, which is the only part that’s funny anyway.”

Eva Longoria-Parker, Ellen DeGeneres and Los Angeles Lakers basketball star Kobe Bryant are the scheduled debut night guests for Lopez. Sykes will welcome Mary Lynn Rajskub of “24,” Daryl “Chill” Mitchell of “Brothers” and “The Amazing Race” host Phil Keoghan.

John Ridley, head writer for Sykes, said he’s wary of asserting that the show will “blow apart” the late-night model.

“If you look at all the shows, they’re not different. Are we going to have a monologue? Absolutely. Guests? Yes. A panel? Yes. But it reflects Wanda’s sensibility,” he said.

And that, it’s safe to say, is not akin to what Carroll calls the “predominantly middle-aged – to be kind – white men” that have long dominated late-night.

The increase over 2008 fell well short of the more than twofold percentage jump in the ‘08 season compared to 2007, according to the group.

And on mainstream cable channels the number of such characters continued to drop, slipping from a total of 32 in 2008 to 25 this year. The 2007 tally was 40.

Two channels that program for gay viewers, here! and Logo, add 27 gay characters to the cable total, GLAAD said.

The 14th annual “Where We Are on TV” report released Wednesday found that 3 percent of actors appearing regularly on network drama and comedy series in the 2009-10 season will portray gay, lesbian or bisexual characters.

That’s up from 2.6 percent in the 2008-09 season. In 2007-08, it was 1.1 percent.

Only four of the 18 characters this season are nonwhite, GLAAD found, and there is only one lesbian, on ABC’s “Grey’s Anatomy.”

Using information provided by ABC, CBS, Fox, NBC and CW, the group reviewed 79 scripted series announced to air this season.

The steady increase in gay characters is promising, as are story lines that are becoming “more reflective of current issues affecting our lives,” GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios said in a statement.

Fair, accurate images of gay couples marrying, raising families and contributing to their communities help fellow Americans “come to accept and better understand” their gay family members and neighbors, he said.

Examples cited by GLAAD include a gay couple marrying on ABC’s “Brothers & Sisters” and a gay police officer on NBC’s “Southland” – a rare character for a crime drama.

ABC led the networks in gay representation, with 5 percent or eight characters out of 160, followed by Fox with four out of 104 (4 percent).

CBS lacked a single gay or bisexual part, the report said. The network, which has gay cast members on its reality series and daytime shows, declined comment.

Speaking to TV critics this summer, CBS programming chief Nina Tassler said the network has a commitment to diversity, including gay representation, and intended to improve.

This is getting silly. And sad. Put a microphone under the mouth of a conservative and he/she will spout out theories that can’t even pass the smell test. From porno equaling gay and same sex marriage being a talking point for the socialist revolution, conservatives have harangued us for the past few days. Well let’s end the week with a former child actor going a few rounds with Charles Darwin.

Kirk Cameron, whose last decent project was Growing Pains (and the show wasn’t all that), is taking on Darwin’s The Origin of Species. According to Cameron the book is the reason why so many people are atheists and he isn’t about to let that influence continue.

“Atheism has been on the rise for years now, and the Bible of the atheists is ‘The Origin of Species,’” Cameron said. “We have a situation in our country where young people are entering college with a belief in God and exiting with that faith being stripped and shredded. What we want to do is have students make an informed, educated decision before they chuck their faith.”

Cameron should be a little bit more honest, but I assume as a no talent hack veracity isn’t a strength. The “educated decision” of college students is not his care. He would rather everyone pray to his God. Makes life a whole lot easier.

As for atheism being on the rise, it is of course more complicated than that, but why would Cameron feel a need to go into details? They always frustrate the crazy.

He had to rethink his wardrobe to fit the L.A. lifestyle.

“I got there and realized I don’t even have the right clothes because I brought suits and ties … there is one challenge during which you’ll find me in a pair of flip-flips,” he says, laughing.

The season kicks off with Lindsay Lohan as a guest judge. Gunn says she was a great fit to the show (airing 10 p.m. Thursdays).

“She was absolutely wonderful. She knows clothes, she knows what she likes, what she doesn’t and she’s able to articulate that.”

It’s been a long wait in between seasons five and six, as NBC Universal and the Weinstein Co. battled it out in court over whether the show could move from Bravo to Lifetime.

Now that the show is on a new network, don’t expect Gunn to be any less of a calming, mentoring presence for the designers.

“I only want them to succeed,” Gunn says. “I have a very particular way of operating which is to believe in them and to believe in their abilities … I’m also respectful of the wear-and-tear that they go through on the show.”

Gunn has been described as the antithesis of “American Idol” judge Simon Cowell, who has no problem giving negative feedback.

“The British have a very different way of operating … `You are nothing and you will never become anything’ and that’s repeated to students over and over … Talk about deflating. I believe in giving individuals opportunity,” Gunn says.

1. I’m no expert (yet), but panhandling strikes me as a profession that requires a soft sell.

2. Do all Oklahoma politicians dance with the crazy?

3. Is it a good idea to keep allies from joining the federal lawsuit for gay marriage?

4. A Merlose Place redux? The first one stank. What TV executive green lighted this wreck?

5. Israeli Army soldier Shmuel Freimark’s lawyer needs to come up with a better excuse for his client’s madness. Threats to kill because your tribe is getting bad press is a dumb tactic.

6. The initial TABC report shows what most knew. The authorities had no business raiding the Rainbow Lounge this past June.

7. Are most baseball fans by nature nostalgic and anti-modernity?

8. For the first time in awhile I was able to go to my local bar this weekend, and not feign interest for a conversation.

9. Never liked any film by John Hughes (RIP). For some reason they never resonated. I did however, have a serious crush on Anthony Michael Hall. Always have love for the nerds.

10. This story shows it’s time for us old-heads to change up our views on sexuality.

ABC was the highest-scoring broadcast network, thanks to shows like Ugly Betty and Brothers & Sisters.

Showtime and the CW also received ratings of “Good.”

CBS, NBC, SyFy (formerly Sci Fi), A&E, and TBS all failed.

The most hilariously sad improvement award goes to Fox, which moved from last year’s failing grade all the way up to “Adequate,” with a note that some of the programming was “problematic.”

Hollywood Gay Mafia, looks like you still have some work to do.

In its third annual Network Responsibility Index, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation found that of HBO’s 14 original prime-time series, 10 included content reflecting the lives of gay, bisexual and transgender people. That totaled 42 percent of the network’s programming hours, in series such as “True Blood,” “Entourage” and “The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency.”

By contrast, on NBC and CBS only 8 percent and 5 percent, respectively, of prime-time hours included them, the report said.

For the report, GLAAD reviewed all prime-time programming – totaling 4,901 hours – for inclusion of such characters or issues on the five major networks (ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and the CW) from June 1, 2008, to May 31, 2009. The study also examined all original prime-time programming – 1,213 hours – on 10 prominent cable networks. The programming included dramas, comedies, unscripted fare and newsmagazines.

Cable’s Showtime ranked second, with 26 percent of its programming hours featuring gay characters or themes. Series included “The L Word,” “Weeds” and “The United States of Tara,” a new comedy about a family whose teenage son is gay.

ABC got the highest ranking of the five broadcast networks, with 24 percent. It was the second year in a row that ABC led the broadcasters.

Among ABC series, the report cited newlyweds Kevin and Scotty on “Brothers & Sisters,” the engagement of Andrew to Dr. Alex Cominis on “Desperate Housewives” and bisexual Dr. Callie Torres on “Grey’s Anatomy.”

The CW logged 20 percent, and the Fox network 11 percent, the report said.

Among the sampling of cable networks evaluated, TNT showed the largest growth, jumping to 19 percent last season from 1 percent the year before. This was largely thanks to its new drama series, “Raising the Bar,” which features gay law clerk Charlie Sagansky as a regular character, GLAAD said.

“Television shows that weave our stories into the fabric of the series present richer, more diverse representations,” said Rashad Robinson, GLAAD’s senior director of media programs.

In September, GLAAD will release its annual report evaluating gay, bisexual and transgender inclusion, and other diversity, among scripted characters scheduled to appear during the 2009-10 season. Monday’s report said TV characters in general are predominantly white, regardless of sexual orientation.