Getting the “last laugh” is easy,
It’s the audience you gotta watch out for.
George didn’t say that — I did, but heck, any joke in a storm?
We love ya pal. We’ll never forget the first comedian to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court.
S.K.
Have you been pining for another deformed criminal mastermind? Are you tired of all the clean cut post-modern corporate bad guys who can’t be distinguished from your local insurance agent? Are "thrillers" and detective novels letting you down when what you need is some old fashioned freak show figuration?
Well rest assured. The latest James Bond novel, "Devil May Care (James Bond) " written by Sebastian Faulks (under the imprimatur of Ian Fleming Productions) carries on the misadventures in the "Fleming-way" world of disability villainy.
 
The writing is terrible and you’ll have to stagger over more patriarchal cold war clichés than one supposed could be arranged between the covers of a single book, but that’s okay because the chief evil-doer is a dude named Gorner who used to be a Nazi but then became a Commie and all because "back in the day" when he was a student at a British prep school the other boys made fun of his deformed left hand.
Bond learns of him from "M" and here’s how it goes:
"The man crops up everywhere. One of his hobbies is aviation. He has two private planes. He spends a good deal of time in Paris, but I don’t think you’ll have much difficulty in recognizing him."
"Why’s that?" said Bond.
"His left hand," said M, sitting down again, and staring Bond squarely in the eye. "It’s a monkey’s paw."
"What?"
"An extremely rare congenital deformity. There’s a condition known as main de singe, or monkey’s hand, which is when the thumb makes a straight line with the fingers and is termed ‘un-opposable’. Being in the same plane as the other digits, it can’t grip. It’s like picking up a pencil between two fingers." M demonstrated what he meant. "It can be done, but not very well. The development of the opposable thumb was an important mutation for Homo sapiens from his ancestors. But what Gorner has is something more. The whole hand is completely that of an ape. With hair up to the wrist and beyond."
Something was stirring in Bond’s memory. "So it would be larger than the right hand," he said.
"Presumably. It’s very rare, though not unique, I believe."
Yep. In "Devil May Care" (the title is completely irrelevant) you get a socio-pathologized Nazi-cum-Commie Social-Darwinized "missing link" who wears an oversized white glove in a vain attempt to hide his monkey paw.
The book aims for balance because Bond’s best friend, the redoubtable Felix Leiter of the CIA has lost a leg and an arm and now gets around on his true grit. So you get dueling cripples in this book which of course makes the whole thing acceptable.
I can only add that this book should be divided into halves. Each half should then be thrown away. You can accomplish this whether your thumbs either do or do not work.
Trust me.
S.K.
I wasn’t one of those who believed in the end of days.
I gave a butterfly my fingertip.
I was sweaty, loving, crude, open, honest, and bookish.
I didn’t just "believe" in the Bill of Rights,
I wove my clothing from its threads.
I held the kelson of creation and a dying man
And knew they are the same.
I saw the constitution of the living and of the dead
And knew they are the same.
Sometimes in the sweetness of a summer’s hour
I held the face of the man I loved
And I held the face of the woman I loved
For all faces are divine
Reposed in the ardor
Of the sky.
What did I tell you anyway?
Poems hold so tightly to everything, everyone–
There is no good time to go.
These leaves know nothing
But light and dark
And how to live.
S.K.
Steve and I happened to be in downtown Iowa City yesterday. I heard a helicopter approach and when it and another passed over our heads I said "It’s George Bush".
Turns out I was right.
This photo captures his helicopter flying over the flooded Coralville strip.
P.S. That’s all I’m sayin’.
While you won’t hear much about it from the national press the “ADA Restoration Act of 2007” cleared two House committees yesterday with only one opposing vote. (I’ll have more to say on that in a minute…)
You can read all about yesterday’s proceedings and learn a good deal about the history of the “ADARA” at the website of the American Association of People with Disabilities (AAPD):
It is heartening that in a time of divisive squabbling in Washington the cause of Americans with disabilities has once again “shown the way” for true bi-partisan legislation and negotiation.
Disability is universal—it transcends race, class, gender, point of origin, sexual orientation, social status, age, fortune, and happenstance. Just so: the lives and concerns of people with disabilities are in fact the most logical point of “ethos” for a largely divided country to reassert its American values of fairness and decency.
While you wouldn’t always know it from the strident qualities of my prose I am at heart an optimist about the United States. I have lived to see kids with disabilities get a real chance in public education—when, not so long ago I was one of those “mainstreamed” kids who struggled without civil rights or appropriate educational supports. Yes, we’re a decent nation. We’ve come a long way in many areas. There’s reason for a positive outlook. And yes, there’s also reason to stay strident. Rights and liberty are inconvenient for the ruling classes and we forget this at our peril.
“Aw, c’mon, Kuusisto, you don’t really think we have a ‘ruling class” in the United States, do you? I mean, don’t you agree that we’re a ‘classless society” etc. etc.?”
As I write I am reminded of the old story of the Finnish fisherman with a leaky boat who observed that owning such a thing is better than having a sunken boat, etc.
Connie and I are doing just fine here in "river city" (yes, Iowa City is the spawning ground of "The Music Man") and we are safe and dry.
The good news is that according to the Army Corps of Engineers the Iowa River has "crested" and we should now begin to see the flood waters recede from the University of Iowa’s buildings. At present 19 buildings on campus are either flooded or are damaged.
But mercifully no one has been hurt and we have much to be thankful for.
I know I speak for many when I say I am thankful to the thousands of Iowa City citizens who worked tirelessly to save the University of Iowa’s library from the floodwaters. While several adjacent buildings to the library have been flooded the library is still operational as of this afternoon. Perhaps its just the student and scholar in me, but I feel great sentiment about the library and the sight of over 2000 people erecting a wall of lumber and sand in the service of saving our books, well that’s a very powerful thing to behold. The spirit of our students and staff and of the local friends of the University of Iowa has been evident all over this town.
If the weather forecast is right, and if the Army is correct, then we should begin to see the waters receding soon. It will take a lot of work to put the U of Iowa back together but I know that the Hawkeyes will succeed.
S.K.
LINKS:
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"
ADA Restoration Headed to House Markup on Wednesday
ADA Restoration Moves Forward in the House
Disability, civil rights and employer groups are working hard to secure support for the negotiated legislated language that has been circulated on JFA and now has the support of more than 50 national and 60 state and local disability groups, the US Chamber of Commerce, the Society for Human Resource Management, the National Association of Manufacturers, the Human Resource Policy Association, and a growing list of companies, including McDonalds, General Motors and Honeywell. Lobbying on the House side for this negotiated deal began in earnest yesterday, focused on the members of the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee (which also plans to mark up the bill next Wednesday).
To avoid confusion with the bill that was introduced last July, we have begun referring to the negotiated legislation as the ADA Amendments Act. In anticipation of next week’s markup, we are working to counter any efforts in either committee to attach an ADA notification requirement to the bill, a cause that was championed in prior Congresses by Representative Mark Foley of Florida and that is strongly opposed by the disability-civil rights employer coalition working to enact the ADA Amendments Act. We are also working hard to secure White House and Senate Republican support for the negotiated bill.
:::TAKE ACTION:::
At this point, it looks like the bill will receive strong bipartisan support in the committee markups in
the House. We have included a list of the members of the House Education and Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee below.
· Contact Members on the House Education & Labor Committee and the House Judiciary Committee between now and Wednesday morning and urge them to support the bipartisan negotiated language that will become the Chairman’s mark in both committees. The names are below.
Locate the Members’ contact information online, or call the Capitol Switchboard at (202) 224-1904 (V) / (202) 224-3091 (TTY) and ask to be connected to their offices by name.
· If you haven’t already, consider having your organization "sign on" to the proposed deal language by sending an email to Anne Sommers, JFA Moderator, at aapdanne@earthlink.net. Support of the deal language means you not only approve of its language and terms, but that you also agree to defend it against all attempts by Members of Congress to amend it–unless both sides agree to the amendments.
We will continue to share the list of organizational support with Members of Congress as ADA Restoration moves forward in both the House and Senate in coming weeks.
· Attend the markup! The House Education and Labor Markup is scheduled for Wednesday, June 18th, at 10:00 in the Rayburn building, Room 2175. Advocates are encouraged to show their support through numbers. The accessible entrance to the building is the main entrance with the horseshoe drive off South Capitol Street.
Continue reading “Who are the Political Friends of People with Disabilities?”
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.
Planet of the Blind 