Disability on TV

The other night I was flipping channels before I went to bed, and I stumbled on an episode of House. House was having an argument with a very sick Foreman about a brain biopsy that could leave Foreman permanently disabled. Foreman's argument is that House handles being disabled just fine, but House retorts with something along the lines of, "do I make this look glamorous?"

This got me thinking about the portrayal of disabled people on TV. House becomes addicted to vicoden because of the pain in his leg, Joe from Family Guy functions in his wheel chair, but as soon as he has the chance to walk again he becomes a jerk to all of his friends and only returns to himself after his friends and wife injure him to the extent of lower body paralysis again, and so on. There are not many deptictions of people with disabilities on TV, but those characters are sometimes the only exposure some people have. Talk about stereotypes.

If these are the images that the general public is getting, then the general view of those with disabilities is probably not as positive as is might be otherwise. I guess that this reverts to a question that has come up repeatedly in our discussions. Is it better to expose people/students to a stereotyped version of real life, or to not expose them at all? Should we use these characters as a discussion starting point and try to dispel misconceptions? Or should we avoid potentially creating more misconceptions by not bringing it up, since there are not many good examples? This is one of those questions that I would love an actual answer to, although the chances of getting one when the answers can be so subjective may or may not really help.