Jerry’s Protesters : Labor Day: Muscular dystrophy telethon is picketed by disabled activists who say Lewis makes them objects of pity. The show raises a record $46 million in pledges nationwide.

Disabled activists waving checks made out for 1 cent and chanting “Power, Not Pity!” were thwarted Monday when they tried to crash Jerry Lewis’ muscular dystrophy telethon in their wheelchairs.

The confrontation came as the annual Labor Day fund-raiser registered $46 million in pledges nationally--a record for the 28-year event.

Guards at KTLA-TV in Hollywood, where local segments of the show were being produced, refused to open the studio gates to the protesters.

“We want to deliver our donations just like everybody else,” complained Marta Russell, a writer from Encino who is in a wheelchair because of cerebral palsy. Russell accused Lewis and the telethon of “perpetuating lies” about disabled people.

“All of us are being tarnished by the pity-mongering that Jerry Lewis does year after year,” she said.

Lewis, wrapping up the telethon from Las Vegas, dismissed the criticism. “Let somebody come to me and tell me what I do ain’t good stuff,” said the 67-year-old actor-comedian, who has been stung by such criticism in recent years.

“That’s America talking,” he added as the telethon tote board registered the final pledges.

Muscular Dystrophy Assn. officials in Hollywood refused to talk with the protesters--who left their checks and a handful of pennies atop the gate arm after waiting about an hour.

Earlier, about 75 demonstrators stood vigil in front of the Sunset Boulevard station carrying signs criticizing high salaries paid to Muscular Dystrophy Assn. leaders and the telethon’s methods.

Among them was Ben Mattlin, a 1970 Muscular Dystrophy poster boy who asserted that his sad-faced poster had been a fraud.

“They wrote on my poster: ‘If I grow up, I want to be a fireman,’ ” said Mattlin, now 30 and living in Brentwood. “I never wanted to be a fireman. And I always knew I had a natural life expectancy. I was exploited.”

Telethon volunteers inside the studio stood by Lewis--and the more than $1.3 billion he has helped raise over the years for the Muscular Dystrophy Assn.

“I didn’t feel the least bit used,” said poster boy Jason Baringer, 12, of Palos Verdes. He is a seventh-grader who has Duchenne muscular dystrophy and would like to become a lawyer or a computer graphic artist.

Said his mother, Tami: “We have to remember that not all these diseases are disabilities. Some of them are life-shortening. We have one agenda and that is to save our son’s life.”