Who is Andrea Bocelli? Does he really love Donald Trump? Is he truly clueless about the devastating policies aimed at disabled people that are in effect because of this White House? I can answer the last two but not the first. As to who Bocelli is I can only speculate. Meanwhile his fan fest with Trump has led, predictably to ableism. Social media trolls are employing blindness as metaphor. The theme? He’s blind to reality. Ah, the old blindness is ignorance trope. How we’ve missed you! Yet another post suggests he’s a “dumb Italian”—another slur I thought we’d finally gotten rid of. My belabored point is that after years of Trump the “left” in these United States feels free to be as objectionable as the GOP. And of course ableism knows no party. The cripples know this.
As for the first question one can only speculate. Bocelli is stage managed. Lives in a bubble. He has no idea about the horrors of blindness in his own country much less in the US. Some years ago I traveled to Italy with my first guide dog and was treated with contempt. It was everywhere. It wasn’t just a lack of knowledge about disability rights. T’was outright disdain. Bocelli must have encountered this, at least in childhood. And I’m guessing his defense mechanism was and is, “I’m not one of you.” I’ve met a few well heeled blind people who have done this. Notably an arch conservative federal judge who had deep pockets and sneered at the blind. I once told him off. He’d characterized the blind clients of a guide dog school as “mooches and leaches…” (And you betcha, he was on the board of directors.) You betcha. Being blind and thinking yourself superior to those other blind people is both not uncommon and a trap. And the only way to avoid that trap is to live a fully protected and curated existence.
And of course maybe Bocelli is just an ass. A vain ass. A chauffeured ass. Yep. I can only guess. But I’ve see such people before.
Planet of the Blind 