Yesterday’s Senate defeat of the United Nations charter on the rights of people with disabilities is easy to dismiss as an instance of the Tea Party’s influence on 38 rightward leaning Senators–politicians so frightened by re-election they’re willing to pander to contemporary know-nothing-ism. A variant of this small “d” democratic impulse at rationalization is to say that the Senate has occasionally been worse–one has only to recall the influence of the KKK in our nation’s affairs for example. (In fact the Tea Party bears a considerable resemblance to the Klan with its rabid and narrow view of American exceptionalism.) I can’t say if things are worse now than when Harry Truman was young and was advised to join the Klan if he wanted a political future; I’ve no idea how hateful and deep the present strain of America’s reactionary provincialism is. What I do know is that I have a bad case of Huddie Ledbetter’s “Bourgeois Blues” with a decidedly crippled strain. I think of Leadbelly singing: “Hey all you colored people, listen to me, don’t you ever try to build no home in Washington, DC…”
One can say, “Well, we have the ADA here at home–the failure of the Senate to ratify an international treaty that would bring those rights to other parts of the world doesn’t mean anything, really.” Dear Senator Grassley: I recall being denied entry to an Italian church because of my guide dog. Recall being denied access to a hotel restaurant in Milan. Senator Grassley, you apparently don’t give two straws about my rights to travel abroad with dignity as an American citizen. In fact, given your long standing opposition to disability rights, it’s clear you think that disabled people should shut up and live in a back room on the family farm and stop bothering you. Senator, you are a party hack. The idea that voting for a United Nations charter would in any way interfere with American law is false but you used it–you used it to suborn the rights of people all over the world who are striving to follow America’s lead. To you and your 37 colleagues who voted down one of the noblest exercises in human rights in global history I say simply, you are pandering to the same forces that historically animated the political arm of the KKK–shallow, paranoiac, isolationist vitriol. And that’s the best thing I can say. How can you look Bob Dole in the eye? Oh, that’s right, you don’t have to! You can walk right around him since he’s using that wheelchair. Senator Grassley, you’re a just a saucebox: an impertinent and petulant fellow. That you’ve cultivated this in lieu of statesmanship means of course that you are a wantwit–a fool. In this age of international relations and globalization you and your 37 buggy cohorts represent a dangerous tendency in our politics, for you want us to simply leave the world, not as leaders but as dark and toadying neo-Fascist romantics. I’ve lived in Iowa, sir–I’ve always thought you a dullard, but never a dolt. And who am I? I’m just one of the 56 million people with disabilities in these United States. That’s all.
Planet of the Blind 