Hanging with Dignity

Alright, I’m in the woods and my "dial-up" connection is tenuous at best. "What," you might ask, "Have I been doing?" In the spirit of full disclosure I have been kissing my rock and working on an odd little book for the AARP–a "how to have fun" kind of book that is designed to promote the art of conversation. Asking me to write a book about conversation is a silly thing since I’m able to talk to a pine stump with mutualism intact. I am sufficiently self-delusional enough to believe the stump is correspondingly gratified. One lives by the myths that get the job done. Last night I talked to a water spider down on the dock. He was about the size of a hockey puck and he had variegated and complex gray hairs. How do I know that? Oh don’t ask.

Just FYI the water spider doesn’t believe that the movie "Tropic Thunder" is worth two flies since it demeans consciousness in all its forms. My spider also said that he once went on a vacation with Robert Downey Jr. and although he’s sworn to secrecy about the matter he can report that Mr. Downey can really hang from a web. Oh don’t ask.

I don’t like the pejoratibve use of the "r" word any more than I like the ugly employment of other slurs and I freely admit that in a free society one must be allowed to create drivel since this is the admission price for free expression. See Plato. But I don’t have to like it. And in case anybody wonders if I’ve changed my tune over the years all I can say is that when I was a college sophomore and first saw Mel Brooks’ "Blazing Saddles" I was pretty darned uncomfortable with his use of the "n" word throughout that flick–even as I understood that satirical comedy aims to make a democratic hash out of every form of imbecility.

I don’t like the "n" word and I don’t like the "r" word though I will defend the right of imbeciles to say what they want. The larger trouble is that Hollywood has such a miserable track record when it comes to depicting people with disabilities and so the further imposition of demeaning language into an already impoverished cultural misapprehension of cognitive disabilities is unfortunate.

If you protest Dreamworks use of the "r" word you will look thin skinned and humorless. If you don’t protest it you are in essence lying down under a heavy blanket of cultural abjection–a matter made all the worse by the erosion nation wide of public school programs for kids with learning disabilities.

So while I have a spider to talk to, and a rock, and even a beloved yellow Labrador for Heaven’s sake, I’m not a "happy camper" when I think of Mr. Downey Jr. or the pettifogging cold blooded roaylty at Dreamworks.

I say this as a person who in public school was freely called "retarded" because I couldn’t see.

Once, about twenty five years ago, and for no obvious reason, I was invited to dinner with a famous Irish classical musician. We somehow got onto the topic of "the Kennedys" and this world renowned performer said that he’d once shaken the hand of one of the Kennedy brothers–though I don’t remember now which one–and he said that he felt a "large, soft, pillow-y hand that had never pulled a potato!"

Well that’s esentially what I think of Robert Downey Jr. Save that I’m thinking of his head. There’s a head that’s never been troubled by Donizetti’s "Requiem" or Boolian algebra, or much else that stands beyond the vodka shelf over at aisle B.

As for Dreamworks, am I the only one who thinks their pixelated dopey cloying sub-Cartesian two dimensional cartoon allegories for grownups are the epitaphs for critical thinking? Okay. I do sound like Neil Postman. Yes. And I never liked Disney either. I do however like Kate Smith. I love it when she sings "the oceans flecked with foam" and I guess I better stop there.

S.K.