There’s a compelling and timely post over at Bad Cripple that outlines the dark and discordant emotional dynamics of the comedy skits concerning New York Governor David Paterson’s blindness on Saturday Night Live. We have written extensively about the wilfull and objectionable “ableism” that was inherent in those NBC skits that depicted the blind governor as a stumble bum who in turn couldn’t understand the fundamentals of basic architecture.
The New York governor’s current low standing in the polls has everything to do with his handling of the NY government during a depression and there’s plenty to be said about that. But on a human scale the derision of the media where David Paterson’s disability is concerned has had a very real and very human cost.
I too recall being taunted in the schoolyard; bullied; singled out by teachers because I couldn’t focus my eyes in the proper direction or read a standard printed page. I carry the remembrance of scorn and the concommitant internalized shame to this very day.
The post over at Bad Cripple is singular for its human portrait of what ableism can do to even the most talented people with disabilities.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 