What’s the difference between a kiss and lip service? I’ve been pondering this during our current political season. In the running of the political bulls we’re now in the "gotcha" part of the race when every campaign is out to demonstrate the white lies being tossed off by the competition. This is a proper phase in a free election and there’s nothing wrong with it.
Except for one thing: there’s a vast difference between a kiss and lip service. Most of our nation’s contemporary problems are systemic and they are not simply matters of human character. "Character" as promulgated by the ultra-conservative machinery is just another variant of lip service. When the GOP candidates say that the private sector can take care of the nation’s health crisis you’re getting lip service. When the Dems say that we need to become a neo-isolationist nation and turn the Pentagon into condos, well, you get the point.
My lip service radar is highly tuned because I see how people with disabilities are getting the lip all the time. Lately I’ve been in the market for a blind friendly cell phone and shame on Verizon for not having one. Shame on Apple for producing generation after generation of blind unfriendly computers and mobile products. Shame on the nation’s airports for relentlessly offering horrific passenger assistance for people with disabilities. I’ve been manhandled and talked down to by sub-contracted wheelchair pushers in airports from Philadelphia to Seattle and back again. I’m proud of the fact that I can maintain my sense of humor around 80 per cent of the time. I think that’s a pretty good record when someone is routinely treated like a trash bag by airport personnel.
As I say, we’re a nation given over to lip service. It’s been almost twenty years since the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act and still there are very few blind friendly electronic products available. In Iowa City, Iowa, where I now live, I see scores of shops and restaurants that are entirely inaccessible: these are businesses that would otherwise think of themselves as being progressive. I mentioned to one local coffee shop that they ought to remove the chairs and tables from a wheelchair ramp and they stared at me as though I was asking them to turn cat litter into Christmas cookies. Lip service.
And notice how few of the candidates have mentioned disability in any of the debates so far. That’s because tackling the nation’s health care crisis will be as big a job as restoring our nation’s economy under the New Deal. Tens of millions of Americans are about to become disabled as the population ages. Current plans call for them to live in the streets. Lip.
Someone has to lead this nation on a crusade for equitable and humane social services and for enforcement of our national civil rights laws.
The GOP’s sentimental and nostalgic idea that Reaganism is the cure is entirely misplaced. We need a restoration of government by and for the people and that means decent public housing and education; equal health care for all; and yes, it might mean that those with deeper pockets might have to pay some taxes.
In the meantime I wonder if people with disabilities will be able to vote in Ohio this coming fall. I fear that while the candidates argue about who has the best character the people who have health care or mobility issues are still getting the lip.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 