[nfb-talk] Fw: [leadership] Blindness and Perspective, The Protests Harm Our Image

[John G. Heim]

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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