[nfb-talk] Fw: [leadership] Blindness and Perspective, The Protests Harm Our Image
John G. Heim
jheim at math.wisc.edu
Thu Dec 18 17:19:28 UTC 2008
Well, if we're going to talk about that movie again, I'd like to point out
that the epidemic could *not* just as easily have been anything else. You
wouldn't have a movie where people got locked up and were unable to take
care of themselves if they had a disease that cause their right arm to fall
off or something.
The movie's whole point is that losing your sight is a disaster. You can't
take care of yourself if you go blind. Otherwise, the movie wouldn't make
any sense.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sherri" <flmom2006 at gmail.com>
To: "Nfbf Leaders" <nfbf-leaders at yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, December 18, 2008 7:11 AM
Subject: [nfb-talk] Fw: [leadership] Blindness and Perspective,The Protests
Harm Our Image
> I'm just passing this along, because I for the most part agree with her
> perspective., though I'll probably incur someone's wrath for doing so.
> *smile.
>
> Sherri
>
>> From: Penny Reeder <penny.reeder at gmail.com
>> Subject: [leadership] Blindness and Perspective, The Protests Harm Our
>> Image
>>
>> Dear ACB Leaders,
>>
>> Here's a copy of my latest blog at "Penny for Your Thoughts," on
>> GettingHired.com. If you decide to circulate what I wrote, please
>> include the link, as follows:
>>
>> http://community.gettinghired.com/blogs/pennyforyourthoughts/archive/2008/12/16/blindness-and-perspective-the-protests-harm-our-image.aspx
>>
>>
>>
>> Blindness and Perspective, The Protests Harm Our Image!
>> Members of groups which call themselves "the organized blind" are hopping
>> mad. It's
>> been a tough year for them. First it was the movie, "Blindness," that
>> infuriated
>> them. Now, it's two skits on the December 13, broadcast of "Saturday
>> Night Live."
>> During October, many members of these groups protested against the movie,
>> "Blindness."
>> "It portrays a terrible image of The Blind," organizers of the
>> demonstrations against
>> the film ranted.
>> I guess it did. Certainly those poor wretches who were struck, by virtue
>> of an epidemic
>> that paralyzed a fictional Latin American city by making every citizen
>> but one instantly
>> blind, didn't cope very gracefully, or graciously, with their instant
>> disability.
>> The newly blind protagonists couldn't manage even the simplest tasks.
>> Fear and repression
>> were the government's response, and quarantine. And those
>> blind-from-birth people
>> who already knew how to live independently were transformed into
>> society's criminal
>> element. They had an extortion racket going on in the quarantine
>> facility, and that
>> was just the least offensive aspect of the ways they violated the
>> newly-blind detainees.
>> It was a grim portrait of an epidemic, but as a blind person, I did not
>> find the
>> specific portrayal of disability in the book, "Blindness," which I read,
>> or the movie,
>> for which, I have to admit for the sake of full disclosure, I saw only
>> the previews,
>> offensive. I don't think that the blind men and women of the book or the
>> film say
>> anything about me or the other people I know who are blind. I think the
>> novel by
>> Jose Saramago,is a brilliant portrayal of a society paralyzed by terror,
>> and the
>> epidemic of blindness could just as easily have been an epidemic of
>> instant paralysis,
>> or speechlessness, or swine flu, or extreme paranoia. How would any of
>> us react
>> to a deadly or disabling or terrifying epidemic? How would our
>> government respond?
>> What would we let the authorities get away with? These are the questions
>> that the
>> Nobel-prize winning author engendered for readers of his compelling
>> novel. These
>> are the questions I asked myself, as I read the book, and later as I
>> thought about
>> the movie, and the organized demonstrations against the film and theaters
>> showing
>> it.
>> I found their demands for censorship to be an assault against many of the
>> values
>> and freedoms in which I believe, and I thought the organizations and
>> people who demanded
>> that the movie theaters refrain from showing the film were embarrassingly
>> narrow-minded,
>> and that they did nothing to improve society's image of people who are
>> blind or the
>> disability of blindness. They are not speaking for me, I told anyone who
>> knew about
>> the demonstrators, or anyone who asked what I thought.
>> Now, it's "Saturday Night Live" that has inspired the wrath of many in
>> the so-called
>> movement of the organized blind. SNL, apparently searching around for
>> someone new,
>> to replace Sarah Palin as an object for humorous exaggeration, chose
>> David Patterson,
>> the Governor of New York, who happens to be legally blind. In addition
>> to addressing
>> telling questions of the day like who will be replacing Hillary Clinton
>> as senator
>> for New York State, and what can repair a self destructive economy, they
>> focused
>> on his blindness as a suitable topic for typical SNL ridicule. The
>> skits - there
>> were two on last Saturday's SNL - damage our image, the protestors
>> complain. The
>> writers and the cast portrayed Patterson as incompetent, and as a
>> buffoon, that's
>> what they say. Well, maybe they did, but here again, I part company with
>> my enraged
>> colleagues who claim to speak for everyone who is blind. I thought both
>> skits were
>> funny.
>> When Patterson held up a printed chart, upside down, I laughed-because I
>> have done
>> the same thing countless times. Better to laugh than to cry, or pretend
>> it never
>> happens, or regret that it does, or berate myself for something over
>> which I have
>> no control! Sure, if I've had time to prepare for a presentation, I'll
>> mark the
>> top of a printed chart with a paper clip or a staple or figure out some
>> way to keep
>> from displaying it upside down, or backwards. But, if I haven't had time
>> to prepare
>> in advance, I'm just as likely to hand you a printed sheet of paper
>> upside down as
>> right side up, or with the print side down. So what! It doesn't say
>> anything about
>> my character or my competence, and the best way to respond graciously is
>> to see the
>> humor in the incident and move on!
>> I'll bet that David Patterson, the real Governor Patterson, does just
>> that when
>> something similar happens to him in the course of his real life.
>> In the second skit, Patterson wanders in front of the camera, spoiling
>> the shot.
>> Of course, he doesn't realize what he's done, and the pretend host of the
>> pretend
>> "Week End Update" doesn't know what to do either. "Just keep walking I
>> guess," she
>> says with a mixture of confusion and annoyance and regret.
>> Not funny, those people who are blind with the huge sense of personal
>> effrontery
>> and outrage say! You can't portray one of us that way!
>> Why not? Again, I hate to admit it, but this kind of thing can happen to
>> a person
>> who can't see with alarming frequency. Or is it just me?
>> I live near Washington, DC. That means that every once in a while, I
>> visit one of
>> the Smithsonian museums, the National Zoo, or one of the monuments on the
>> Mall, and
>> it happens every so often that my guide dog and I, walking down the
>> sidewalk in front
>> of a famous monument, or waiting to meet a family member or a friend
>> outside a famous
>> building find that we're in the wrong place at the wrong time. You need
>> to move,
>> a sighted companion might murmur, and then, by way of explanation, say,
>> "You're in
>> the way. They're trying to take a picture."
>> So, I smile and tell the family group trying to create a Washington
>> memory that I'm
>> sorry, and I move. That's it. No big deal and no problem! An
>> occurrence like that
>> says nothing about my ability to walk around independently or my
>> awareness of my
>> environment, or my ability to get a job, or to do a job. (Certainly I'm
>> not applying
>> to be a truck driver!)
>> The news releases from the blindness organizations, and the angry op ed
>> pieces say
>> much less about SNL's understanding of what it means to be blind than
>> they say about
>> their own inability to see humor in the ordinary, sometimes a little
>> annoying happenstances
>> that occur because people who are blind really cannot see. Again, I say,
>> they are
>> not speaking for me!
>> Am I disloyal to the other members of the community of people who are
>> blind because,
>> when I was a kid, I used to laugh at Mr. Magoo? He always reminded me
>> of myself,
>> and it always tickled me when he crashed into a wall or misconstrued the
>> letters
>> on a label! (I might have laughed even more frequently if the cartoons
>> had included
>> a video description track.)
>> Maybe I'm a jerk because I used to love "Head Wound Harry," in an earlier
>> incarnation
>> of SNL? Certainly I wouldn't laugh at a real person with a real head
>> wound, but
>> the SNL exaggeration always made me laugh.
>> That doesn't mean that I wouldn't help a real person with a real head
>> wound, any
>> more than I think it would be okay to judge a blind person who wanders in
>> front of
>> a TV camera as incapable of functioning effectively or independently in
>> society.
>> I know that when I hand a colleague a printed piece of paper upside down
>> that that
>> person will judge me on the basis of the words I wrote on that sheet of
>> paper, not
>> on the basis of my not being able to physically see the print on the
>> page!
>> It seems to me that when they present themselves as humorless and
>> judgmental and
>> carrying huge chips on their collective shoulders, people who are blind,
>> and demonstrate
>> against an acclaimed novel, or a cartoon character who can't see very
>> well, or a
>> film where blindness serves as a metaphor for a societal flaw, or a skit
>> on SNL,
>> do those of us who are blind much more harm than they change opinions or
>> modify attitudes
>> in the people who are the objects of their outrage. Discrimination on
>> the basis
>> of disability is inexcusable, the unemployment rate for people who are
>> blind is six
>> times the unemployment rate for people who are not blind (or at least,
>> that's what
>> David Patterson said when talking to reporters the night after the
>> Saturday Night
>> Live skits), and the attitudes and statistical reality that fact
>> describes reflect
>> a situation that is truly terrible for many people who are blind. But,
>> it is a sense
>> of humor as well as a shared appreciation for everything that makes all
>> of us, disabled
>> and non-disabled, human that provides a way for us to cope with life as
>> we know it,
>> and a starting point for working toward shared goals, including full
>> employment.
>> When an organization that claims to represent "the blind" defines a
>> novel, or a cartoon
>> character, or a skit on "Saturday Night Live" as a personal attack
>> against every
>> person who is blind and fails to find humor in the minor scenarios that
>> result, not
>> from any incompetence, but rather from the very circumstance of not being
>> able to
>> see, then, as a class of people, they risk being labeled quick to anger,
>> humorless,
>> and unlikable. If people run the other way when they see us coming, if
>> they feel
>> like they have to apologize for using ordinary words like "see" or
>> "look," and if
>> they would just as soon hang out in places where we aren't so they won't
>> have to
>> worry about saying the wrong thing or laughing at the wrong joke, then
>> it's unlikely
>> that they will place people who are blind very high on anyone's list of
>> people who
>> are employable.
>> The blindness organizations are fond of describing the disability of
>> blindness as
>> just one characteristic. It's no different than hair color, or height,
>> or ethnicity,
>> I have heard their spokespeople explain, and to a certain extent, I
>> agree. It's
>> not my blindness that defines who I am, it's my capabilities, my
>> intellect, my ability
>> to relate to other people.
>> It's not my blindness that defines me, but that blindness is an aspect of
>> who I am
>> that is a little more important than the color of my hair, because it is
>> my blindness
>> that requires my employer to accommodate my need for a screen reader on
>> the computer,
>> it is my blindness that excuses behavior that would be described as
>> rude - like walking
>> through the middle of a photo shoot - unless the people I've
>> inconvenienced realize
>> that I did that because I didn't see what they were doing. It's my
>> blindness that
>> causes me to hand you a sheet of paper upside down or backwards. You
>> need to know
>> that I can't see so you will understand, and I need to acknowledge that
>> error by
>> laughing about the inadvertent slip-up, and letting you know that I
>> understand why
>> you have momentarily been taken aback. It's our mutual acknowledgement
>> of my blindness
>> that allows both of us to get beyond an uncomfortable situation, and it's
>> the humor
>> that lets both of us move beyond the moment of discomfort and get back to
>> the interaction
>> that's important.
>> So much analysis about two little skits, you're probably saying. And, I
>> agree.
>> The so-called organized blind need to understand that it is our blindness
>> that engenders
>> those momentarily uncomfortable situations for all of us and for sighted
>> people who
>> interact with us, and it is an acknowledgement of what it means to be
>> blind, i.e.,
>> that we can't actually see, and a sense of humor that can save the day
>> and allow
>> everyone to move forward together to solve the real problems that the
>> characteristic
>> of blindness ought not to engender, problems like discrimination, lack of
>> opportunity
>> for education, or social inclusion, and an unemployment rate that really
>> is six times
>> higher than the jobless rate for people who can see.
>> Posted
>> Dec 16 2008, 01:44 PM
>>
>>
>> For other Blog postings at Penny for Your Thoughts, visit:
>> http://community.gettinghired.com.
>>
>>
>
>
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