My friend William Peace has alerted me to a tasteless portrayal of New York
Governor Paterson on last Saturday’s NBC comedy show Saturday Night Live. Bill’s post can be read at his blog “Bad Cripple” and I urge you to see what he has to say about the affair. Here’s the link:
http://badcripple.blogspot.com/
I think blindness can be funny. For instance when traveling alone I sometimes walk into the Women’s Room. This is funny for about a dozen reasons but most obviously it’s what every fifth grade boy wants to do. Women, seeing a man with a guide dog stumbling into their midst are either amused or solicitously helpful or both. I don’t make this mistake very often and when I do I try to cover it with some of my own humor: “I said find the Grille, not the Girls!” I wag my finger at the dog.
But the SNL skit presented Governor Paterson as being severely unable to orient himself to public space; depicted him holding a script upside down; made crude use of his inability to focus his eyes. These are the old comic gags that rude French comedy used to employ back in the late middle ages. Starved for humor the locals would round up blind men and give them oversized fake spectacles and musical instruments that they couldn’t play as well as fake sheet music they couldn’t read.
I wonder if the folks at Saturday Night Live find “Step and Fetchit” funny? How about some buck toothed
China
men ruining your laundry? These are the stock figures of racist and able-ist culture and no one who owns anything like an education would judge this stuff worthy of a primetime television show or even in a frat house revue.
The terrible after effects are what most concern me. As I’ve said over and over on this blog and in public, people with disabilities remain disproportionately unemployed in the
U.S.
and caricatures like the stumbling and lost version of Governor Paterson do considerable harm out here in the world where real lives are in the balance.
NBC owes the good governor of
New York
an apology and they owe me one too.
Not ready for Prime Time indeed.
SK
Planet of the Blind 
I tuned in late and didn’t get what was going on. At first I just thought they were making fun of someone in the audience for being clueless while blocking a live TV shot. It seemed sort of funny. Then I realized that this was supposed to be a joke on Gov. Patterson and blind people in general. The first thing I said was, “Oh boy, Steve is going to be mad as hell about this!”
The whole thing gave me that sick feeling you get when you suddenly realize you’re witnessing the mindless acts of stupid, hateful people, or children when they are being cruel. The good news was that I could simply turn SNL off for good. I just hope John Stewart doesn’t ever piss me off like that!
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Steve, as I watched the sketch play out, all of the things you’d ever taught me about discrimination towards those with disabilities ran like a news ticker through my head. The whole time, I’m thinking.. this is wrong.. I’m glad you wrote a blog about it.
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