Today I realized that the Disability Blog Carnival # 12 is up and we have yet to introduce # 11. Steve and I have both been quite busy and we’ve managed to fall behind on our blogging. We’ve got some catching up to do.
Carnival # 11 is dedicated to the topic of "independent (liberated, free) living" and is hosted by Alexander at howtowheelchair.com.
I’m sitting in a coffee shop about to do some work and thought I would log on to this blog to see what my husband had to say about the passing of Kurt Vonnegut. (See below)
Then I decided to visit Lance’s site because I was sure he too would have something posted by now. Sure enough. Take a look at the title he almost gave his post and note the similarity to Steve’s title below. Vonnegut, Twain, Kuusisto, Mannion….all great minds, don’t you think?
Good-bye Mr. Vonnegut. I know you didn’t believe in heaven, or if you did, it was a place oddly without value, replete with angelic children and old Nazis playing shuffleboard together. But I believe that heaven is where we point our sails and hence I see you with Mark Twain, the two of you on a veranda overlooking the Hudson river, and you are enjoying the telling of an intricate story, the kind that goes forward like a disreputable wagon train that has been forced out of town by an untoward event that took place at yesterday’s circus and the likes of which the locals had never seen before and which in turn the circus folk will tell again and again, and the story will become variously clouded and ill suited to the demands of memory and that will make it better and better. I see you both smoking good cigars. I hope you tell Mr. Twain the joke which ends with the punch line: "Hold onto your hats, we could end up miles from here."
Oh, and Mr. Vonegut. Get Twain to tell you once again, and out loud his respective diaries of Adam and Eve. Ask him to introduce you to them by and by. They will, I think, look strangely like people from Indiana. Oh, and say hi to Kin Hubbard and the other free thinkers out there. Remind them please that us terrestrials will never forget them.
S.K.
You’ll appreciate these posts as well…
Excuse me. I said a stupid thing. But I’m really really a good person. Aren’t we essentially a Christian culture? Don’t we believe in forgiveness? Wasn’t it Abraham Lincoln who called us to observe the better angels of our nature? Shouldn’t we forgive Don Imus for his remarks concerning the Rutgers Womens’ basketball team?
I don’t think we should forgive Don Imus or anyone else who makes money by ridiculing people who remain socially marginalized in American culture. I don’t think we should forgive Rush Limbaugh for his hateful remarks about Michael J. Fox. I don’t think we should forgive Bill O’Reilly or Michael Savage for their loathsome and vicious remarks about Americans who have opposed the war in Iraq. The hate speech in this country is ubiquitous and ugly and out of control.
Don Imus’s comments concerning the women basketball players at Rutgers are in my view "hate speech" because they spill over into a categorical bell curve of aesthetic acceptability. Imus argued that the women of Rutgers were "nappy headed ho’s" but then took the next necessary turn toward full blown racism by placing the appearance of the Rutgers players alongside the "cute" women of Tennessee. This is a comparative and associative gesture that fully represents the architecture of racism. That Imus’s executive producer Bernard whatever his name is chimed in with the word "jigaboo" is merely the icing on the cake.
Don Imus may be a good man who said a stupid thing. But he said a really really stupid thing. He engaged in hate speech.
Some white people will say, "well black people talk about themselves this way, so isn’t there a double standard?"
You betcha.
When black people are making equal salaries; when their children are not incarcerated in higher percentages than white children; when we are truly equal in our society, then yes, everything will be merely a question of comedy or rhetoric.
In the meantime there are real lives in the balance.
Don Imus should devote himself to his ranch for kids with cancer. He should take a course in cultural diversity at Rutgers.
S.K.
See the video response from the Rutger’s team at Shakesville and this thoughtful Your Daughter and Imus post at Blogher.
What exactly is disability culture? Some people believe that having a shared language, as many deaf people who use American Sign Language do, constitutes a shared cultural experience. Others in the disability community believe that having a culture has to do with a shared vision that people with disabilities will one day enjoy equal opportunity in the United States and around the world.
In the U.S. we tend to talk about culture but we’re often very independent when it comes to our daily lives. Sometimes I tend to think that there’s a down side to the American idealization of the independent and heroic person who "goes it alone". We have this John Wayne mentality even in the disability community. We tend to call this heroic and independent disabled person a "super crip" because this kind of disability activist exemplifies the classic American hero figure’s solo flight to save the planet while everybody else watches.
When I think about disability and super crip culture I’m inevitably reminded of a story my mother liked to tell about her father. It seems that one night in August her dad was fed up with the porcupines rocking back and forth in the rocking chairs on the porch of the family’s New Hampshire farmhouse. So in the middle of the night he stomped outside with his shotgun and took aim and fired in a general direction. The porcupines were unharmed and like all creatures in such a circumstance, they fled. They were amazingly fast.
It was 1938 and the family farmhouse was in the middle of nowhere. The sound of a shotgun raised no alarm. My grandfather took aim again and missed.
Then he spotted one of the creatures lumbering into the tool shed. He was beside himself with glee. He would make an example of one of them, by God!
He took aim inside that shed and managed to hit both the porcupine and a cast iron bean pot. That’s the nature of shotguns of course. And yes, there was a ricochet effect and my grandfather received a flesh wound on his scalp.
The flesh wound was a minor affair of course. And the porcupine passed away somewhere in that tool shed. All was forgotten for a couple of weeks.
Then my grandfather noticed the odor. The porcupine had died somewhere under the floor of that tool shed. It was necessary to pull up the floorboards and find the carcass.
And so he pulled up the boards one by one in a hot, airless shack that smelled of dead porcupine.
He didn’t find the creature under the first board, or the second or fifth or eighth plank either. He had to pull every last board.
This was the cause of family mirth of course. The man grew faint of pallor and whenever he would emerge for air he would speak in non-sequiturs. He would say things like: "whittle stick" or "granary rats" and no one knew what he was talking about.
I think that super crip disability culture works along these lines. My grandfather represents the heroic disabled person who refuses to ask for help. This is the American self made frontiersman or frontierswoman who will single handedly slay the porcupine or locate the corpse.
If my grandfather had asked for help the porcupine would have been found in half a day. And if he had asked for initial advice from the community, well, it’s likely that someone would have said that he could easily relocate the rocking chairs to a place beyond the tool shed. The truth is that the porcupines were the only rockers in that little community.
People with disabilities are quite often trying to relocate the porcupines just as my grandfather did. Sometimes it’s good to take thought for your local culture. Ask questions. Hold your fire. Listen to your community before fighting or fleeing.
And speaking of Disability Culture…
…and the 30th Anniversary of Section 504
A message from Scott Lissner, ADA Coordinator at The Ohio State University:
On April 5, 1977, thousands of "the disabled" converged on the offices of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare around the country to demand that the legislation Congress passed 5 years earlier be implemented. In San Francisco they took over the HEW Office and started what became the longest sit-in occupation of a federal building in U.S. history
At 7:30 A.M. on April 28, 1977 they celebrated victory. The rules implementing Section 504 were signed by HEW Secretary Joseph A. Califano. Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 is a civil-rights provision. It does not provide funding for any programs or activities; rather, it is a requirement that accompanies federal financial assistance to not-for-profit organizations such as schools and universities. Any not-for-profit organization that receives federal grants – for any purpose – must comply with section 504. Section 504 laid the ground work for the ADA.
And thank you to Scott for the following links:
Disability Awareness Month Activities at OSU:
A Look Back at ‘Section 504’: San Francisco Sit-In a Defining Moment
A History: Disability at Ohio State
The 25 Day Siege That Brought Us 504
Many years ago, back when I was a young, believing man, when Jimmy Carter was trying to restore the tradition of F.D.R.’s "fireside chats" by seating himself before a log fire in the White House and talking earnestly to the American people about the nation’s energy crisis, way back then, I knew that the people of the United States were essentially disinterested in having earnestness and honesty in their daily politics.
Our collective inability to address this pathology over the past twenty five years has lead in turn to neo-conservatism and neo-liberalism. Each of "the neos" is constructed out of cynicism and both have their roots in the economic and social dissolutions that followed the Viet Nam war. Neo-cons believe that "New Deal" modernism and its associated reliance on federalism is the source of the erosion of traditional values. In other words: social safety programs will unfairly tax the middle classes and will prevent the poor from developing a work ethic. Neo-liberals bought into this idea because they correctly understood that, after Reagan, the new "lingua franca" of American politics was going to be religious rhetoric and not the language of the old fashioned American social contract.
Both positions are wrong. The United States needs strong social programs that can put young people to work in the manner of the Works Progress Administration. We need such programs desperately. The language of faith and values, with all its glorification of volunteerism can’t obscure the fact that young people need jobs and education at the very moment our nation’s infrastructure needs modernization. So to be direct about the matter: I want Jimmy Carter back! I want a President who believes in tackling the nation’s energy problems while championing human rights. I want a president who has religious values but who believes in the best of F.D.R.’s New Deal. I believe that the nation will vote for the candidate who is best able to understand that both the neo-cons and the neo-libs are collectively lacking both vision and courage. I felt like typing these words this morning. I hope my readers don’t mind. I just can’t help it. And one last "dig": both the neo-cons and the neo-libs are respectively concerned with lifestyle choices rather than ethical government. Lord help me! I’m starting to feel like Christopher Lasch.
S.K.
What’s funny these days? I have it on good authority that the French are drinking more beer. Explanations from the French Ministry of Gastronomic Identity hold that the disgraceful movement towards the hop is merely a reflection of France’s new international culture. Translation: there are more people inside France who hail from lowly beer drinking countries than ever before. But of course these people are not French. Not really. They just live there and drink beer. I picture these people sneaking around with their scandalous brown or green bottles hidden under baby blankets in strollers or with cans secreted under their hats. I pity the French. What’s next? Tex Mex food all over the Dordogne. I guess that would be "Le Tex Mex"?
Remember when the big controversy in France had to do with finding French ways to say "Jumbo Jet"? They came up with "Le Jumbo Jet"–I’m not making this up.
Other funny things:
Norm Coleman, the senator from Minnesota, who was elected after the death of liberal democrat Paul Weldstone, and who was a car dealer and ran on a pro-Bush bandwangon is trying to figure out how to run against Al Franken. Polls show him trailing the comedian. Coleman doesn’t want to distance himself from W’s handling of the war. That’s a difficult position to be in. The plot behind this particular senate race resembles something you might find in a Kurt Vonnegut novel.
The other night I watched a PBS series devoted to the "baby boomer" generation. I suffered through the lugubrious narrative about the boomer generation’s singularity and never once did I hear the word "disability" mentioned. It was the boomers, and especially the Viet Nam veterans, who launched the national movement that lead to the adoption of the Americans with Disabilities Act. And the boomers are about to become the most physically disabled generation in world history. How interesting that the subject stayed completely off the self-congratulatory script of this program.
I still think of the boomers as the generation that left all the trash at Woodstock. They’re now rolling up the largest debt in history. Leaving dirty stuff behind is their great forte. That’s a cheap shot of course. Maybe I should call it "le cheap shot"?
I do wish to conclude today’s post on a positive and serious note.
I want to recommend the book "A Long Way Gone: Memoir of a Boy Soldier" by Ishmael Beah. I will write about it more thoroughly but suffice it to say that it’s a literary memoir of great distinction by a young man who survived being abducted and who was forced to fight in the civil war in Sierra Leone. This is a rare book and I heartily urge everyone to read it.
S.K.
The difference between a politician and an opportunist is that the former has better clothes. At present you wouldn’t know the difference: both tribes in Washington appear to be equally naked. This morning I saw a Democratic spin doctor and his GOP counterpart square off about the announcement by Rudy Giuliani that if elected he would invite his wife to participate in cabinet meetings.
Predictably enough, the Republican representative said the kind of things that Clinton supporters used to say about the value of having Hillary at the side of President Bill Clinton: remember the "two for one" arguments circa 1992?
And sure enough: the Democrat blathered on and on about how Rudy shouldn’t have said this, implying that the position regarding his wife suggests to the public that Giuliani is weak.
Both politicians and regular rank and file opportunists will speak in the passive public assumptive whenever they are being invidious, but this particular demonstration this morning was in my view a new "low" in Democratic "spinning".
I wonder if just for once we might have a presidential campaign in this country that wouldn’t see the nation pandering to sexism, racism, ableism, homophobia, and their associated sub-categories of sub-Cartesian posturing.
"You may say that I’m a dreamer/ But I’m not the only one…"
Thank you Mr. Lennon…
The more I think about it, if we really valued marriage in this country, we would insist that presidents should in fact always have their spouse at cabinet meetings. Think of it! Nixon, had he been forced to invite Pat to his cabinet couldn’t have ranted and raved about his political foes and he couldn’t have used all those expletives.
And if Hillary is elected, she can be sure that Bill is behaving himself at all times if he’s required to attend meetings.
S.K.
I thought that things were going badly but now I’m not so sure. I just heard that Donald Trump may shave his head as part of a wager with someone and heck, that’s worth getting excited about. Why? Because then he’d be another big pink man on TV along with the cast of characters I’ve mentioned below. In fact, I suspect that "The Donald" would in fact look a good deal like "Daddy Warbucks" if his pate was pristine and maybe even waxed. Of course I’m a blind guy. My visual literacy is perhaps a bit suspect. But I have it on good authority that Trump has a big head and that accordingly there’s the potential for a genuine Warbucks look should the man lose his wager and get scalped.
I don’t know what all the fuss is about concerning Rudy Giuliani’s new wife having been married "twice" before her marriage to America’s Mayor. She apparently "forgot" one of her husbands when she said that Rudy was her second hubby. I don’t see why this memory lapse bothers people. Jeez. It’s not like she’s tried to take credit for inventing the internet or something like that.
So I’m feeling better about America because it’s entirely possible that Donald Trump will join the Big Pink Men Hall of Fame.
It doesn’t take much to lift me out of my gloom. I mean, you know, the war, the erosion of civil liberties, the loss of global respect for our nation: all these things are easily forgotten when one can still contemplate the prospect of a very rich man making an ass of himself. I used to watch "Columbo" for that very reason. If you remember, that was the premiss behind every episode. I used to love Peter Falk’s criminal adversaries, all of whom were beautifully arrogant and filthy rich. I remember one episode where Robert Culp played a particularly narcissistic doctor who had murdered his wife. But like all running dogs of the capitalist system, he talked too much.
I’m giving "thumbs down" to a new murder/suspense thriller called "The Maiden’s Grave" by Jeffrey Deaver (who is famous for "The Bone Collector"). In his newest venture a psychopathic murderer escapes from a Kansas prison and takes a bus load of deaf girls hostage. Although Deaver has done his homework about the deaf community and though he goes to great lengths to make deafness and deaf culture realizable to his readers, in the end his deaf characters are simply a contrivance of plot: they are unfortunately cast as being brave or timid according to their respective feelings about their deafness, a contrivance that I personally feel is quasi-ableist at best. I was disappointed by the book because I’ve liked Deaver’s Lincoln Rhimes novels and I think that despite all his research into deafness he has fallen short of the sophisticated portrait of disability that he has offered in these other books.
But back to the big pink men issue: I wonder if all the Presidential candidates had to shave their heads who would win the election? Rudy has an edge since he’s nearly bald. Hilary and John Edwards have the best hair and so they’ve got the most to lose in this scenario. John McCain already looks bald, or so I’m told. Fred Thompson could easily be another big pink guy.
Hey, does anybody besides me think that if someone from "Law and Order" is going to run for the presidency it should really be Sam Watterson? Just a thought.
S.K.
Planet of the Blind 