Author: stevekuusisto

“Time will say nothing but I told you so,” wrote Auden. At first one is tempted to think of time as being shrewish–but then Auden adds: “Time only knows the price we have to pay.” Time is sad. Time is very sad indeed.

It was a gray day in Iowa. I wrote letters for students; answered e-mails ; and I wondered why people with disabilities are still without basic accommodations at major American universities. Apparently lots of colleges and universities think that making disabled staff and students compel them to meet the basic required accommodations under the ADA is an acceptable policy. Time only knows the price we have to pay. We drink tea. We play Mahler on the HI Fi. We talk to the trusting dog. We go forward.

I’m middle aged and I have a good job. I teach at a Big 10 university in the heart of the United States. I have excellent students and colleagues. And yet I’m mindful that 20 years after the ADA people like me are barely on board in higher education. I think often of African-American faculty some forty plus years ago who had to withstand the piercing scrutiny of a white professoriate and college administrators. And of course one doesn’t have to stop there.Young faculty of color are struggling even as I type–diversity is a very hard road and I know something about it as I chaired the Ohio State University’s     Diversity Committee and got to hear some hair raising things. Time only knows the price we have to pay.

Disability is still thought of as being outside the cultural core of many institutions of higher education. Its a “rehabilitation” model enterprise at such institutions: they will grudgingly provide test taking services or paper work outlining for faculty that students need accommodations. But imagining that the faculty might also need accommodations–or the staff or returning veterans or that these issues are part and parcel of the intellectual history and momentum of American pluralism is beyond most campus administrations. This isn’t strictly the case but its all too often a matter of “the same old same old”. Time only knows the price we have to pay.

I was interested to read the following over at the Department of Justice ADA website concerning a small private college. If people with disabilities stay the course they can make changes at their respective colleges and universities. The price is your sense of graceful inclusiveness which Time can tell you about in full measure.

Here’s the announcement from the Department of Justice:

CHATHAM UNIVERSITY WILL INCREASE CAMPUS ACCESSIBILITY

On December 9, 2008, Chatham University, a private university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, entered into a settlement agreement with the Department under which the university will make its campus and services more accessible to individuals with disabilities. The settlement resolves an investigation during which the Department found violations of the ADA Standards for Accessible Design in newly constructed buildings, architectural barriers in existing facilities, and inaccessible circulation paths throughout the campus. The university has agreed to undertake specific remedial steps over the next five years to remedy these and other barriers to full accessibility on campus.

The agreement addresses the major facilities on campus and related services, including administration buildings and faculty offices, assembly areas, classrooms, skill labs, cultural facilities, science facilities, dining areas, student housing and lounges, the library, the athletic center and playing fields, and parking. It also requires the university to modify policies, practices, and procedures when necessary to afford access to services and facilities for individuals with disabilities.

S.K.

Lance Mannion has a most excellent post today entitled A Matter of Principle in which he fulminates about the mysterious praise being offered to the GOP for its wholesale lack of cooperation with the Obama administration. Of course “the praise” isn’t all that mysterious for indeed there are plenty of bootlicking “I’ve Got Mine, Screw You” exceptionalists in the news media. I won’t digress and proferr an alphabetical list of journalists and talking heads for that would put me at risk of further aggravating my tennis elbow but you can see some of the miscreantswith their links over at Lance’s site.

I still stand by my earlier observation  that the GOP is in The Charnel House alongside Victor Frankenstein. The Reaganite addiction to a bad idea is its own justification in the minds of the House and Senate Republicans. If you remember the novel, Victor Frankenstein is only moved to admit his mistakes after his creation attacks his own family.

Lance’s assessment is that the GOP is afraid of its own right wing which is to say that there’s evidence that some pols would have liked to vote for the stimulus package but they were afraid of the reactionary elements on the far right. I like that point of view but I’m still banking on the Frankenstein Theory. They’re just not haunted in their own private homes.

Shallow is as shallow does?

S.K. 

There’s an interesting article over at the Ithaca Journal that highlights three high school athletes who have disabilities who are participating in mainstream sports in the small upstate New York town of Waverley. One of the kids is a legally blind student named David Briggs who is both a placekicker on the football team and a member of the track squad. I am so excited about this I can’t make the verbs and nouns go into the corral.

You see, I was a high school kid in upstate New York who wanted to be on the track team. They let me practice for a couple of weeks–even gave me a uniform–and then they called me into the Principal’s office where I was told in summary fashion that I couldn’t be on the track team because of the terrible risk I presented for the school’s insurance liability. I was crushed. I tried to argue my case. I asked why the school’s insurance liability was any different when I was running around a track as opposed to walking down the stairs in a student stampede between classes. The Principal (who didn’t like me because of course I needed accommodations and his crummy school hated providing accommodations, even simple ones like large print tests) told me that “it was out of his hands” etc. etc. and of course I got him with the old zinger (for I was the child of academics) saying: “Well yes, but didn’t Eichmann say that?” (Even at 16   I knew that there’s a cut off point–if the sub-Cartesian numb-skull is going to hate you then so be it, you might as well take your parting shots.)

The really painful part of the story happened about two days later as I was walking home from school. The track coach who was also the student driving teacher. pulled up alongside me with a car full of students, leaned out the window, and demanded I return my uniform. And of course there was laughter from the back of the car.I walked home feeling approximately four inches tall. I had to climb the sheer walls of gutters and pavements.

This story in the Ithaca Journal makes me feel like running in my high school track suit, which I never returned in case you’re wondering.

S.K.  

I am not opposed to bringing up unplanned kinder so let’s not get off on the wrong foot here and let’s not pretend that I’m surreptitiously advocating for abortion though you’d be correct to surmise that I’m not immune to arguments in favor of forestalling pregnancies particuarly in cases where children are having children but let’s also be clear that Sarah Palin’s daughter who has been interviewed by NBC is in fact just a baby herself and yes, she looks like a deer caught in the headlights as she attempts to reassure viewers that she’s never been happier. Yes she’s never been happier though neurological studies tell us that 17 year olds aren’t fully developed intellectually or emotionally. She’s never been happier though she’s forgoing the last years of her own childhood in the service of her parents’ impacted moralism with a side dose of sectarian claptrap about the unrestrained goodness of families “pitching in” though no one can say just what that means. Apparently the idea is that children who bear children are fairly and appropriately sustained by their families though the Palin’s have no advice about how poor and/or working class single mothers might garner the same familial support. Like so many other ideas brought to you by the neo-conservatives the underlying idea is to turn the clock back to the 19th century. Children having children fits nicely into social   nostalgia for the 1870’s when children had children and expected little more from life save having the fully bridled opportunity to serve their ministers and their fathers. Why, children having children is just God’s way doncha know? And you, you smug, progressive stinker, you would propose abortion, the sin of sins because you do not value life like all us good Pilgrims and how dare you look askance at our moral commitment to serving our Lord  and all his children.

No I don’t believe in abortion in all circumstances. I don’t believe that people who are likely going to have a blind or deaf child should be granted automatic abortions and I’m opposed to abortions for the sake of convenience but I can’t get over the sight of a frightened and grandly uncomprehending child talking like a Stepford teen about the joys of parenthood while her eyes are desperately searching for something off camera and yes, my video description is unimpeachable. This is a scared child and I’m not buying the Palin’s line of the day.

S.K.

We are pleased to introduce Andrea Scarpino our West Coast “Bureau Chief” who will be sending us posts from time to time. We are delighted to have her on our roll of contributors.

S.K.   

“Chick-Fil-A and Jesus”  

by Andrea Scarpino

Los Angeles, California

I forgot my iPod and headphones at home. That much was my fault. Wearing headphones is a very clear social signal that a person isn’t interested in talking. And I tend to smile too much, which friends tell me makes me look much more eager to converse with strangers than I really am. But when I boarded my flight home after a writing conference, I brought out the stack of student papers I planned on grading during the four and a half hour flight and hoped the man next to me would get the hint. Of course, he didn’t.

American men often assume women are eager to hear their every thought, no matter if the woman in question is a family member or stranger. And I smile too much. So my row mate on the plane started asking me questions about Los Angeles, about whether or not I like to eat at Chick-Fil-A restaurants. It turns out he was flying with 1,400 other Chick-Fil-A franchise owners from around the country to attend their annual conference in Long Beach, a conference at which Rick Warren was going to speak and the 80-something year old founder of Chick-Fil-A would be present to unveil new product lines.

So I gave in and talked awhile between papers, asked the man questions about his franchise and how Chick-Fil-A was faring with the downturn in the economy (he says quite well). When he asked me if there’s a Chick-Fil-A restaurant near my house, I told him that I’m vegetarian, so probably wouldn’t have noticed if there were. I don’t think so, I said, but I don’t really know. Then the conversation turned to Jesus. I went back to a paper, but my row mate spoke even as I wrote comments to my students. He goes on missions to Romania, sets up projectors in the middle of jungles to show children movies about Jesus’ life. He clearly wants to do well in the world, but didn’t explain how showing children films in the middle of a jungle would help improve their lives. If, in fact, their lives need improving. That wasn’t even clear.

I finished my grading and tried to look enthralled with the Sky Mall catalogue in my seat pocket, cursing myself for forgetting my iPod and headphones. The pilot announced our initial descent into Los Angeles, and my row mate began rooting around in his carryon bag. Billy Graham has a church near you, he said, handing me a pamphlet called, “Steps to Peace with God.” You should really go check it out. And here are some Chick-Fil-A free meal cards. He handed me three cards to receive a free Chicken Sandwich Meal complete with Waffle Potato Fries and a medium soft drink. Didn’t I already tell this guy I was vegetarian? I thanked him, took the Jesus pamphlet and cards.

And now, the question I ask myself: why didn’t I politely tell the man I didn’t want to talk? I just finished a conference with 5,000 writers and was tired of schmoozing with strangers and old friends. Why did I worry about hurting his feelings or ego? Of course, I know the answer: I’ve been trained as a woman to take men seriously, to listen when they talk, even if I have work to do, don’t eat at their restaurants and don’t want to hear about Jesus while hurtling through space in a metal cylinder 30,000 feet above the ground. I’m trained to listen, smile nod. And I do it well. My row mate, of course, doesn’t. He didn’t listen when I said I’m vegetarian, didn’t listen to my body language when I kept returning to my student papers, didn’t listen to my silence around his Jesus-talk. Women are taught to listen to men, and men are taught to ignore women. Even my row mate’s free Chick-Fil-A coupons didn’t listen: they’re only good in Florida. I live in LA.

Andrea Scarpino is the West Coast Bureau Chief of POTB and the author of a brand new chapbook of poems. Visit her at: www.andreascarpino.com

One of the prevailing assumptions in identity studies or cultural studies or performance theory or any of the associated alterities one can lay handle to is the premise that human beings are shackled by what for lack of a better term we could call “reactive determinism”. The thumb nail sketch: language is unstable, constitutional  governments are grievously flawed,and all organized social productions are insufficiently capable of sustaining individuals.

The idea that human beings are deprived of sustainable value(s) is drawn from Marxist theory which is to say that any idea is a commodity and all manufacture (whether one is writing a symphony or a treatise on water supplies for Africa) is flawed by its allegiance to whatever value system produced the work in question.

The taxonomy of this cognitive architecture is seldom questioned by cultural theorists. The reason for this is two-fold: if all literary or cultural productions are flawed then they require theorists to complete them; and secondly there’s a latent despairing formation that asserts and reasserts that middle class values are to be eschewed at all costs. The second attitude is the most egregious since it is nothing more than a reprise of mid 19th century socialism minus any noticeable “communitarian” values.

My claim is that few if any contemporary academic cultural theorists are capable of producing work that incites anything other than antithetical deconstructions of rhetorical objects. And in turn my fear is that this has largely claimed the youthful field of disability studies.

If creating value systems–whether we’re talking about building clinics in Africa or assisting developmentally disabled young adults to live and work on their own–if these kinds of enterprises are viewed by academics as being further instances of flawed social production than the field of disability studies cannot by definition reach out and educate a rising generation of young social workers, nurses,doctors, police, school administrators, or architects that people with disabilities have complex and alternative skills and talents that should make them worth hiring.

Indeed one looks largely in vain for a progressive analysis of how people with disabilities present substantive cultural value. The reason for this is simple. By adopting the reactionary determinism of the academic left disability studies is affecting a position that labors as antithesis alone.

Me? I lose sleep over these matters. I don’t look to any social construction for my entire list of cognitive or spiritual nutrients.

S.K.  

We wrote about Toxic Schlock at NBC just a little while ago and now we’re disposed to do so again. As a blind person who has a sharp sense of humor I wish to set the record straight though I shouldn’t have to. Blindness is in fact funny. But its not funny if the humorous treatment deprives the blind of intelligence. And that’s what this blog finds so objectionable about the recent bigoted burlesques at NBC. Let me for the sake of argument make an analogy. If Saturday Night Live had presented Tina Fay as Sarah Palin and, yes, for the sake of the comedy payoff had Fay-as-Palin appear on the news segment and lets say that as she was attempting to talk she suddenly opened her blouse   and began breast feeding a baby–and as she was doing so she lost the ability to make sense, thereby reinforcing the old patriarchal stereotype that women can’t be women and think at the same time, well I think its safe to say that millions of TV viewers would be repulsed. Fay’s version of Pailin was funny because it stuck to Palin’s politics. Period.

Yet these recent NBC presentations of blindness have been entirely predicated on the notion that the blind are clueless buffoons. What’s worse from my perspective is that I heard from a former graduate student of mine that a notable disability studies scholar remarked recently that the SNL skits about Governor Paterson were just fine–as though “the disabled” should be as ready and willing to submit to humorous treatment as any other group, etc.

To which I say: “Ah but Grass hopper! You leave out the distinction between bigoted humor and sophisticated wit. No one would find a black face minstrel show to be in any way funny. No one would think my example above viz Sarah Palin was in any way justifiable. Nor would a person of common sense believe any of it was funny.”

That’s what I would say to the disability studies scholar for whom blindness (about which she knows not a whit) is funny no matter how its presented. I can scarcely go on. And why should I? The 30 Rock episode presented a blind woman as entirely unable to perceive her surroundings. How shameful. And what sophomoric writing! Yuck!

S.K.

I remember the first time, when I was very young, when my mother said, "Connie, don't point.  It's not polite."  I think I was pointing at someone in a wheelchair.  I don't exactly remember the conversation that ensued, but I remember the underlying message: people with disabilities are really no different than the rest of us.  We all have lives; we all have purpose; we all experience joy and disappointment; we all have feelings, and no one likes to be pointed at.

Shame on the folks at NBC and 30 Rock for pointing fingers last night. (As if this wasn't enough)  The depiction of a young woman, a blind young woman out on a date with one of the characters on 30 Rock (I don’t watch it enough to know names) was just appalling.  

Here’s the interesting thing: I didn’t even hear the dialogue last night.  OK, I heard one line.  I had just turned the channel and my timing was such that I saw a lovely young woman, carrying a cane and being guided through a building.  I heard and saw just enough to realize that this woman was being guided through the building but was being mislead to thinking she was being escorted into a restaurant.  I heard the young lady say something like "funny, I feel like I've been walking in circles…"

Just then my daughter called and since she means more to me than a television show, I turned down the volume.   What I saw happening on the screen caught my attention however, and what I saw came through loud and clear.

The writers at 30 Rock took a character, a woman who happened to be blind, and poked fun  – and pointed fingers -  for a laugh.  Millions of laughs, I'm sure.

I’m not amused.  There is a reason why disability awareness and sensitivity training programs have been developed over the years.  But clearly the power players at NBC and 30 Rock have yet to pass around that memo.  And why should they.  Pointing fingers is good for business.  And so much fun.

While not blind myself, I live on the Planet of the Blind.  And not only do I live there,  I work there too.  I have conversations with parents of young children diagnosed with inherited blinding eye diseases.  They are desperate to find treatments and cures for their children.  I sometimes feel compelled to tell them that with proper support and education, their children will be just fine.  But they are afraid….

Why wouldn't they be?  After all, popular culture is still pointing.  And laughing.

CK