Category: Current Affairs

I'm Not an Economist

Well that’s what President Bush said just now during his press conference when asked what he believes may lie ahead for the U.S. economy.

One wonders just what President Bush thinks he might be? Is he secretly an opera singer or a cobbler of cute little patent leather shoes?

I am really a reindeer in Lapland but of course by day I make a sincere effort to look like other people.

I like to rub my back against trees and sometimes while talking to another human being I’ll risk detection and rub my back against a street sign.

You can’t always keep your hidden self locked away.

I’m glad President Bush is making an effort to "come out" about his inner life. I’m certain his popularity would go up if he told the American people he was actually a lawn ornament salesman or an amateur cloud watcher.

I’m not an economist is a start.

S.K.

Why I am a Flip-Flopper

I used to take drugs and now I do not take drugs with the notable exception of Ibuprofen and small amounts of Prozac—so I guess I’ve lasted just long enough to have flip-flopped a flip flop—which is like getting dressed, then getting undressed, and then putting on only your pants. No one would argue that Prozac is as much fun as marijuana.

I used to think that the United States would eventually become Walt Whitman’s America: a place of tolerance, even admiration for all kinds of people. I now believe that America is a vast prison camp without Christian compassion for the mentally ill or the poor. Convince me otherwise and I’ll be glad to flip-flop all over again.

I formerly had a beard but I shaved it off when a long white stripe appeared down one side of the thing so that I grew to resemble a skunk doing yoga. A flip-flop is still a flip-flop. Would it help if I said that "on the inside" I still have a beard?

Years ago I imagined that technology would save us. I was the first person in my circle of graduate students to buy a computer. I remember one guy in particular who prophesied that I had gone to "the dark side" etc. I told him that because the computer could talk it was going to be of great assistance to me. I am typing this with a talking computer. But alas, technology has simply made me infirm at the base of my brain. My limbic node is damaged from having to say things like: "My Java script sub-routine for this Jaws macro is lost in Vista." Once you’re forced to say things like that over the telephone to strangers, well, you’re better off with that old Underwood typewriter with the tricky keys that would sometimes stick. And breathing White Out was a kind of drug experience.

I used to worship major league baseball but now, after the steroid scandals and the phony records I worship my neighbor’s ant farm. There’s nothing false about an ant farm.

I formerly thought Richard Nixon was the worst possible American president. Now I see this was naïve since I didn’t foresee the ascension of Dick Cheney.Strictly speaking this is a flip-flop. No amount of "Bean-o" will change this.

Alright. So what do I remain un-flip-flopped about?

Neil Armstrong: he really did walk on the moon.

Poop on your flip-flops.

S.K.

Monkey See, Monkey Do

I heard the pundits” talking this morning on MSNBC about “doing" Iran, as in, invasion, as in pre-meditated attack, as in sexual fantasy emboldened by Imperial Viagra—god knows how many fantasies must be simultaneously in play for this blather to be fully aired aboard the Kow-Towing media barges.

The way it works in today’s Washington is that the decision is made—the Republic spins in counter-revolution to the sun; then the Bushies tell the pundits to talk it up (which they get paid handsomely to do—remember that talking isn’t the same as truth telling)—and the cycle of proposed vainglory and real violence begins afresh—this time we will have a “Gulf of Tonkin” but without a resolution, eh Gov?

That’s right. There will be no Congressional oversight at all. Look at the passivity and vacuous language of the pundits. I don’t see anyone standing up and calling for the restoration of reason. We’re in a terrible way in America when “reason” is “treasonous” and yet that’s where we seem to be. Viva Viagra! As if two failed wars aren’t enough, let’s start another one!

Does anyone remember the closing scene in the film “Aguirre, The Wrath of God”? Klaus Kinski stands on a battered raft somewhere in the Amazon—conquistador haunted by sun stroke and a thousand monkeys, the raft just spinning and all that merciless sunlight. That’s the perfect image of imperial failure—which is of course imaginative failure with real lives in the balance.

S.K.

Civil Rights for People with Disabilities vs. “The Usual Suspects”

Right now, even as we drink our coffee there are powerful forces working overtime on Capitol Hill. I like to call these forces “the usual suspects” because I love the old TV series “Dragnet” and also because it takes too long to type all the acronyms of the various business and human resources lobbying groups that have assembled to fight the “ADA Restoration Act”. Oh yes, and there are prominent corporations opposed to the full inclusion of people with disabilities in the workforce.

The Usual Suspects are opposed to the legislation because it would require that employers actually make reasonable accommodations for employees who have disabilities—rather than allowing said Usual Suspects to proclaim that these accommodations are wildly unreasonable. Why, By Golly! even reassigning a disabled employee to a different but equal job is an undue burden on said Usual Suspect. Enter the extraordinary, well funded, hence powerful Allied Usual Suspects who are working like junior attorneys to “mark up” the bill.

Their aim? To do to the “ADA Restoration Act” what the Supreme Court has done to the original ADA of 1990.  In decision after decision the Supreme Court has exonerated employers from having to make workplace accommodations for disabled employees. The court has used a cynical  loophole when deciding “for” employers against disabled workers: they’ve argued that Congress, in adopting the ADA has assumed the power to regulate commerce within the respective U.S. states—in effect the conservative majority on the court has asserted that Congress doesn’t have the authority to legislate civil rights for people with disabilities—and by extension, for any other group.   

What’s the final final rationale for such a position? Why by God if you give one disabled employee an accommodation well then, by God you’ll have to give all the differently abled people accommodations and heck, that would mean living up to occupational safety and human rights standards and that’s an undue burden on capitalism which, it turns out, doesn’t always see the opportunities for new markets.

So what you do is declare the authority of Congress null and void. You do it by the process of red herring-ism, you confuse the public that the issue is about disabled people in the workplace who are always a suspect group in the view of the general public—aren’t these people faking something? Trying to get an advantage with a better parking space?

If Americans don’t demand of their Congress true accountability on behalf of our nation’s disabled citizens then they are in effect giving away the last measure of our civil rights—the stakes in this argument are really that important.

Write to your Congressman or Congresswoman; take a stand. Don’t let the “usual suspects” continue to evade social responsibility by means of obfuscation.

S.K.

LINKS:

"Permanent Link to ADA Restoration Act Blogging Round-Up, Feb 11-28 ‘08"

Big Chief Likes Juicy Fruit

The sight of President George W. Bush making his final diplomatic tour of Europe reminds me of Lyndon Johnson’s vice presidential visit to Finland when, among other things, he tossed American chewing gum to the crowds on the streets.

Bush’s rhetoric about everything from the world energy crisis to the problems in the middle east is really nothing more than chewing gum.

Everyone knows this.

He’s "the boy who cried wolf" about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

He’s the fox in the henhouse when it comes to human rights.

He’s chomping a bolus of Juicy Fruit alright.

If America is going to be a gum chewing nation from now on, then I’d like to know which flavor our respective presidential candidates are addicted to.

Here’s my guess:

Barack Obama chews "Nicorette" whenever he gets the chance.

John McCain chews Feenamint—"the minty laxative ".

S.K.

Harriet McBryde Johnson: She will be deeply missed.

Last night over dinner with friends I learned that Harriet McBryde Johnson has passed away.

My first thought was: “How can we tell our sorrow from our bread?”

We had been talking around the table about untimely death. Not so long ago my friend Deborah Tall died young from breast cancer. She was just hitting her stride as a poet and editor. Her memoir “A Family of Strangers” (which was Published just weeks before her death) is a stunning accomplishment.

Now Harriet has died at 50.

America has lost a disability rights leader and a pioneering voice for dignity and justice.

I don’t want to write obituary prose. I can’t bring myself to do it.

Harriet McBryde Johnson’s wonderful memoir “Too Late to Die Young” should be on America’s summer reading list.

She had the unshakable determination to stand up for the rights of the disabled and she took on public figures who would demean or discount the lives of people whose disabilities scare the pants off of shallow “normates”.

When Jerry Lewis opined in a 1990 “Parade Magazine” piece that in his view being disabled must be like being half a person—Harriet McBryde Johnson took him on.

When Peter Singer opined that certain lives are not worth living she took him on.

She took people on in court as an able attorney.

She took on the Democratic party when it couldn’t see why Terry Schiavo’s story was more than just one family’s tragedy.

She fought for the dignity of human life and fought those forces that would diminish our human experience with sophistry and outworn symbolism.

She will be deeply missed.

Let us carry her flag.

S.K.

LINKS:

Yesterday, from Kay Olson’s The Gimp Parade, where you will also find numerous links to her writings:

Nm0900harriet_2
Overwhelmingly sad news today: Harriet McBryde Johnson has died at age 50.

Image
description: The photo shows Johnson in a flowered-print navy dress
looking toward the camera. She sits in her wheelchair, though the image
is a close-up focusing on her and not the chair. Johnson leans forward,
right elbow on knee, chin in right hand. She’s a middle-aged white
woman with dark hair in a very long braid trailing over her shoulder
and into her lap. She’s not quite smiling, but looking interestedly
back at you.

The Post and Courier of Charleston, SC, provides a preliminary notice, with a more formal obituary expected soon

Also:

Beth Haller from Media dis&dat,
at a loss for words,
Sad News,
RIP, Harriet McBryde Johnson

On Being Alex Barton

Mrs. Marcia Cully
Morningside Elementary School Principal

Dear Mrs. Cully

My name is Stephen Kuusisto and I am blind. I was born blind in the mid 1950’s—an era when kids with disabilities were not encouraged to attend public schools. Because my mother was tough minded and persistent I went to the Oyster River elementary school in Durham, New Hampshire instead of the Perkins School for the Blind. Nowadays I make my living as a professor at the University of Iowa where I teach graduate and undergraduate courses in creative writing.   

When I heard the story of young Alex Barton who was “voted off the island” known as Kindergarten because he has behavioral problems associated with an autism spectrum learning disability, and that accordingly his teacher and classmates were simply annoyed by his presence, well, aside from my natural incredulity that such a thing can still happen in the United States, I felt a flood of long repressed tears. You see, I was once a kid like Alex Barton.

I still carry deep under my skin the barbs and taunts of mean spirited public school classmates who found ways to bully me simply because of my disability. I wrote a best selling book about my childhood experiences called “Planet of the Blind”. That book has now been translated into 10 languages. I also host a blog called “Planet of the Blind” where I advocate almost daily for the rights of people with disabilities.

Like many “baby boomers” with disabilities who helped to pioneer the concept of mainstreaming for disabled kids I keep hoping that the vicious and ignorant behavior that I experienced in public schools will at last become a thing of the past.

So you can imagine my deep distress upon hearing the story of young Alex Barton and his teacher Wendy Portillo. I won’t belabor the point. I’m certain that your school district and school board has been hearing a good deal about this affair.

I simply write in this instance to say that unlike the media or those who would take sides on this shameful matter, I am grieving for Alex and his family. The history of disability features a long timeline of stigmatization and I know personally how hard it is to overcome the effects of ridicule and substandard teaching.

I wish you and your community good luck and good sense. I hope it’s not too much to ask that your school district will now take this opportunity to think hard about disability with a renewed sense that kids with disabilities are real citizens too. 

As a final disclosure: I am posting this letter on my blog with the hope that I might hear from you in some affirming way. I’m sure we can agree that there are real lives in the balance. 

Sincerely,

Professor Stephen Kuusisto
The University of Iowa

Holy Cow – would ya look at all these LINKS!

Top Ten Reasons Why the Blind Can't Get Ahead

10. The public still thinks blindness is a great misfortune.

9. Vocational and orientation-mobility training are horrifically funded—that is, its left up to the states and nonprofit organizations when it should be offered by every eye clinic and billable to Medicare.

8. Blindness advocacy organizations fight amongst themselves like the characters in “Gulliver’s Travels” who start a civil war over the question of which end of the hard boiled egg to break first—the big or small one.

7. Just try using a cell phone or a Macintosh pc. I mean “off the shelf” “ready to go”—just try it.

6. Just try using a PC “off the shelf” without expensive “third party software”—just try.

5. Just try going to a movie and asking for audio description.

4. TV can’t be watched—probably a good thing.

3. Bank machines; vending machines; signage; endless roulette of incomprehensions…

2. Blind students drop out of college at higher rates than other disabled student groups. See above problems.

1. Access to printed or electronic information remains highly provisional. Thank you Google; Microsoft; Apple; Adobe; Mozilla; Sun Micro Systems; and all the rest of you bongo whacking Information Technology designers who continue to think of the blind as “add on” people. In Disability Studies we call this principle “the defective people industry”.

Why am I posting such a riposte on Memorial Day?  Ask the Blinded Veterans of America.

S.K.

Iowa blind advocates (Steve being one of them) disagree over court ruling on paper money

Advocates Disagree…(click for complete article)

Updated May 20. 2008 6:04PM
By Diane Heldt
The Gazette
diane.heldt@gazettecommunications.com    

A federal appeals court ruling Tuesday that paper money — indistinguishable by touch — is discriminatory to blind people was hailed by some advocates as a long-awaited step forward, while others said a change is unnecessary and plays into negative stereotypes about the blind.

Blind people have adapted and often fold money to distinguish the bills, but no longer would have to rely on others to help them if the Treasury Department makes bills of different sizes or prints them with raised markings, supporters of a change said.

"What’s at issue here is the ability to identify money without other people helping you," University of Iowa English Professor Steve Kuusisto, who is blind, said. "My view is, the most accommodations possible help the most people. To be opposed to accommodations that help people is narrow."

The American Council of the Blind sued for such changes, but the government has been fighting the case for about six years. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia ruling could force the Treasury Department to alter money, though the ruling is subject to appeal.

Continue reading “Iowa blind advocates (Steve being one of them) disagree over court ruling on paper money”