Allison Unfiltered

5 things I thought to myself when Angelina Jolie's boobs went viral

Angelina Jolie published her op-ed in the New York Times on May 14, and I read it that day.  But by the time the maginitude of the news really hit, I was flying across the country, which meant I stopped in airports for plane reading and was hit by a virtual tsunami of magazine covers like this one.

Tornados in Oklahoma? Obama and drones?  Pssht.  But put a movie star on the cover and cover her like crazy?  Suuure!

Despite my instinct that breast cancer isn't something to ignore or minimize, I thought:

1. Brave, shmave.

Since the op-ed came out, she's been called all kinds of wonderful things.  Because I think one of the most positive things a celebrity can do is to take advantage of that hyper-awareness the hoi polloi have of everything he or she does is to bring attention to important issues, I agree with a lot of those adjectives.  Still, I think the word "brave" is being overused. 

UK foreign secretary William "Hague said: 'She gave no sign that she was undergoing such treatment and I think she's a very brave lady, not only to carry on with her work so well during such treatment, but also to write about it now and talk about it.'"

Commendable, absolutely.  But I wouldn't call her brave, no.  Keeping a personal matter private isn't brave.  It's prerogative.  Carrying on during tough times isn't brave.  It's preserving your own sanity.  Being honest with the public isn't  brave.  It's, well... being honest. 

There's something noxious about celebrity-worship that's rubbing me the wrong way, even when said celebrity faces a very human issue.

This was bothering me a bit until I read a line in the novel I eventually chose for my plane reading -- one of the characters is talking about her father, who had died of a terminal illness.  "My brother keeps saying how brave he is.  Dad's so brave.  He's battling so bravely.  Bloody misery, actually." 

Yeah.  That brought it to a head.  Let's not paint things as beautiful when there's no choice.  Angelina had and made a choice, and by all means, let's support her.  I will not, however, put her on a pedestal simply for doing that.

2. I know so many women who have survived breast cancer or who know someone affected by it. 

None of them got to have glamorous photo shoots or be called a hero.  All of them wish they had even the slightest opportunity to take preventative steps.

That's why I like the boldface statement made by H. Gilbert Welch on his CNN op-ed: "NOTE: This story is not relevant to more than 99% of American women."

Angelina's story is really one about her and her alone, genetic testing, and the personal decision it led to.  That's the real story here, not Angelina's chesticles. 

3. Since when did making decisions about your own survival become a mommy thing to do?

Pet peeve: I really, REALLY hate anything that even goes near valuing a woman because she's a mother or a potential mother.  Enter Dr. Oz: "What I'm so proud about with Angelina Jolie's decision to go public is, she acted as a mom."

Uh, what?

So... If Angelina was childless, her decision would have been different?  Less admirable?  That is just so... wrong.  Any woman's life is important and should be long, healthy, and happy, regardless of whether they've bred or adopted an entourage.

4. Genetic testing for the privileged few is the stealth story here.  I'm really confused by Angelina's doctors, who told her she had an 87% chance of developing breast cancer.  I've no idea how those estimates come about, so I won't bother saying more.  But reliance on gene testing worries me when it gets this much mainstream media play -- it's largely, well, sorry, but untested.  Regular personal checks seem by far more reliable (and less like fear-mongering) than looking at a probability chart.

Time put her on the cover with a story that would spotlight the benefits of genetic testing.  "[When] a woman known for her powerfully iconic beauty announced that she had undergone an elective double mastectomy to reduce her genetically high risk of breast cancer, it was a cultural and medical earthquake — a revelation so arresting it became the subject of TIME’s newest cover story," wrote Time's Jeffrey Kluger.

But there are concerns about genetic testing... and the economic concerns of the companies that benefit from it. Don't forget, too, that there are certain people for whom this genetic testing is far out of reach.  And that after Angelina's announcement, the company behind the BRCA1 test saw its stock rise to a three-year high.

5. We're gonna see a worldwide trend of this procedure being called the Angelina. 

Well, shit.

Why has a porno made it onto our bestseller lists?

50 Shades of Grey is the latest publishing phenomenon that I can't wait to be rid of, for a number of reasons. 

My initial disgust when I read it was rooted in the evolution I experienced, going quickly from rabid fan to hater of the Twilight series.  I now recognize the Stephenie Meyer books to be fetishization of the submissive, empty-headed woman-rich and powerful male ideal romance.  When I read 50 Shades, there were far too many parallels -- even the setting is the same, set in the drizzly Northwest Pacific.  Dangerous man, enthralled virgin.  The paranormal had been replaced with pornographic, but when a friend saw me reading the book and recognized the title from all the media buzz it's been getting, I pre-emptively told him, "It's an X-rated Twilight."

Imagine my (not-)surprise when I did some googling and found much of the controversy surrounding the book centers on its alleged origins as Twilight fanfic (here, here, and here).  So basically, when you buy a copy of 50 Shades of Grey, you're supporting the idea that somebody can rip off a book -- beat for beat -- that made millions, throw in a few heaving bosoms and turgid penises, and turn around and sign your own seven-figure publishing deal.

However, please note: that publishing envy and outrage came after I'd finished the first book in the trilogy (and the last I'll read, kthxbai) and after I continued to see it in the hands of commuters on the metro in the mornings who read it in public with no sign of embarassment.  What lingers, then, is my continued puzzlement at its popularity.

The book, for those of you dear elves who've been hiding under your tree, is quite deceptively described on the back as the story of a literature student who meets a young entrepreneur and attraction ensues.  He's got a secret: he's a dom in the BDSM scene, and he wants her to be his sub.

Yawn, guys. 

Sorry, but you're reading the blog of someone who regularly reads titles like the Marquis de Sade's Justine and Reage's Story of O, both for leisure and academic study. And having thrown those titles at you, let me say this: erotica is a high-art act of sensual focus on an experience.  Pornography is explicit instant gratification. 

The next person who tells me 50 Shades is erotica is going to get the lovely gift of my pen up their ass.

In comparison to said titles, 50 Shades of Grey is neither impressively written, nor does it toe any previously unexplored boundaries. And don't let the entrepreneur/lit student tags delude you -- there's barely any character development, no thematic development (beyond the obvious expansions of certain organs), no substance.  What details there are about money or literature are a distant second to the moon-eyed titillation on the page.

Which brings me back to my puzzlement: if 50 Shades isn't well-written or original, why are so many people recommending it to each other?  And I will forever be a little verklempt at the way the copy I read found me: a man lent it to me after another man enthusiastically recommended it to him.  Not to gender-type, but from what I read online, it's generally being called "mommy porn" and is eventually going to end up in the chick lit dustbin. But my copy came from two men.  What the...?

I honestly don't understand why the controversy isn't centered around its enigmatic appeal to its apparently rabid fans, rather than its fanfic origins. Occam's Razor points me back at the success of the Twilight series and its companions on the grocery store bookshelves:

People buying books today actually like high-suspense, stereotypical taboo-fantasy drivel.

Well, fine.  Everybody needs their escapist vices.  I do too, certainly.  And EL James, the author of 50 Shades, has tapped into a fetish that has long held our intrigue: dom-sub relationships are about expressions of power, which is virtually the same thing sex is about.  Perfect for gasping and giggling about with your girlfriends, if your girlfriends are similarly inclined to be as flighty-headed as you.

In trying to understand this book's appeal, I've come up with pithy explanations for this mommy porn -- like moms are stereotypically haggled women who have to manage unbelievable logistical knots without pay or much credit beyond the lip service Ann Romney gets.  As for the men, there is a certain appeal to so easily assuming control, I guess (help?).

I just wish the escapist drivel that was getting everyone excited didn't feature moronic axioms like: "as the submissive, you're actually the one with all the power in this relationship."

Or feature women apparently unable to resist men who tell them: "don't think." (And then proceed to make said women moan as they fuck the living daylights out of them.)

If that sort of thing is what we, as a society, are getting excited about, heaven help us when a really intriguing idea makes its way into our books.

Congresswomen turn their own vaginas into powerful political debate

It's been over a week and I have not yet been able to forget Kate Harding's post on two congresswomen who converted the floor of the House into a place of personal and political power.  They're listening to politicians who support the Pence Amendment, which would defund Planned Parenthood, and the things they say in response are amazing, just amazing. 

My fave is from Rep. Gwen Moore (Wisc.) who listens to Georgian representative Paul Broun express some serious passion on behalf of all the "African-American babies" that are killed in the US, more than any other color proportionally, during abortions.

Well, then, Moore gets up on the floor and immediately wrests any credibility from Broun -- he cites his credentials as a medical doctor giving services to women for years -- first by saying she's touched by his heartfelt concern, then saying, quite matter-of-factly:

"Well, I can tell you, I know a lot about black babies.  I've had three of them. And I had my first one when I was 18 years old, at the ripe old age of 18. An unplanned pregnancy."

Whoo-hoo.  You go girl.  Rep. Jackie Speier (Calif.) is equally amazing, and I love her for saying the words "my vagina" to the world in a way that gave me goosebumps. 

I won't go on about this debate, as there are many people who are far more articulate on the subject than I could ever be. This post isn't about the Pence Amendment, but about the congresswomen who spoke and how they chose to speak. (Side note: the amendment passed in the House on the 18th and goes to the Senate next, which raises anxiety around the possibility of a government shutdown.)

What I find exciting is that instead of the tired, flourishing rhetoric we've gotten used to hearing from the likes of Broun, these women are telling personal stories.  And these personal stories are being told by elected officials who are volunteering information about their own bodies while standing on the floor of Congress. 

If that's not the manifestation of "the personal is political," I don't know what it is.  Plus, these congresswomen do it in a way that explodes the boundaries of power any lawmakers wield on behalf of their constituents.  The political maneuvers they seek to make become very real and paint a picture about living and breathing people walking the streets of our towns today and trying to feed their kids and pay the bills.

Perhaps this revelation is more personal than I'd like to admit. 

I signed a petition supporting Planned Parenthood last week (you can too, click on the link).  Afterwards, I was sent an e-mail listing additional things I could do to support the cause.  One of them was an option to fill out a form in which I could share my story of how Planned Parenthood had an impact on me personally or on my family and friends' lives.  I didn't fill it out.  I wanted to, but I didn't.  Didn't even know where to begin.

So I am in awe of these congresswomen for doing on the floor of a very public venue what I couldn't do behind my laptop in the security of my own home.  And that, to me, is more emblematic of the problems behind the debate surrounding the Pence Amendment than anything else.

When the presence of ovaries trumps "common decency."

In searching for news about the Gabrielle Giffords shooting I came upon a blog posting by Matthew Cooper over at The Atlantic that purported to comment on the cultural significance of the first time a female politician has been violently targeted. He writes:

"And yet the first time we hear about a mother killed in the line of duty or a female POW, it curdles the stomach, not because of paternalism but because it marks a new barrier of decency that's been broken."

Dude. People were shot.  What new barrier?

Cooper is suitably writing from a place of shock and disbelief, so I won't pick on him too much.  But still, there's something kind of twisted going on here... and I'm not talking about the ugly partisan rhetoric being gleefully slung.  ("They're not gunsights -- they're "bullseyes!" People are dead -- Why are we even having this conversation?!)

Perhaps part of what makes this angle newsworthy is that Gabby Giffords is a young, good-looking woman who happens to be married and a mom.  Sociological images has blogged twice in the last few days, first about how those posting initial news reports apparently felt the "married to an astronaut" angle was more of a hook than, you know, the "shooting" angle, and then second about how google doesn't seem to recognize "congresswoman" as a valid search term.

Clearly there's a lot to unpack and digest when it comes to the tragedy in Arizona, much of it more important than the fact that Giffords is a woman, but if our paternalistic framework colors our reception of that news to the point a survivor's female traits make headlines... whoo.  We've got a long way to go, baby.

In which I become a softcore star for the TSA

25 minutes left before my plane takes off and there are fifty people in front of me at the security checkpoint.  I opt for the shortest line, not realizing until I am three away that my line was also the line closest to the infamous backscatter scanner. 

20 minutes left and I start shifting my weight, checking my pager, switching my bag from hand to hand.  I keep looking around to see if I can find a departure screen or a clock on the walls.

15 minutes in, the six-year-old kid in front of me is getting irritatingly cute, asking her mom if she has to take off her shoes, can she go through the x-ray machine instead of the doorway, all while swinging her suitcase in a wide arc that directly intersects with my shins.  My bag, laden with laptop, camera and books, suddenly weigh more than the nearly-oversize suitcase I just checked.  I bend over to loosen my shoelaces, change my mind and stand up.  After a few more seconds I bend over again and loosen them.

I am watching the backscatter machine with interest -- it looks like a giant glass tube in which creatures are inserted and experimented upon.  A man in khakis and godawful tasseled loafers and red socks (men always need help shoe shopping) enters and is instructed to stand with his feet on two parallel yellow marks and bend his elbows as if he is at gunpoint.  Two big metal bars on a vertical swing in a circle around him, and he steps out.  I raise my eyebrow. 

I've read the blogs ranting about TSA policies and the horror stories about colostomy bags upset and five-year-old boys forced to strip down in tears.  Stupid homophobic rants about possibly gay agents ogling businessmen's bodies; scary speculation about nubile women being inspected with more frequency than others.  On their respective trips home from school recently, my brother and sister had different screening stories.  Although young and good-looking, my brother is the scruffy, post-hippie type, 6'1", thin and tends toward the polite, close-lipped smile.  My sister is equally young and attractive with big brown eyes that invite you in.  A yoga teacher, she has been stopped more than once on the street by random strangers to be complimented on her beauty.  Guess which one was picked for the scanner?  Yeah.

The people in front of me in line deposit their cases on the x-ray belt and hesitate -- do they go in the machine or through the metal detector?  Bored TSA agents wave them past.

There is one TSA agent pushing an elderly woman in a wheelchair to the front of our line.  I flew internationally once in a wheelchair, post 9/11.  It was a real hassle, and I experience a momentary pang of sympathy for her.  Then he whispers in her ear, one hand on her back, and points. 

It isn't until she pushes herself out of the chair and totters forward that I realize what is happening.  A little old lady, wheelchair-bound, has just been selected for nudie "we're just checking" pictures.  Unbelievable.  I stare, slack-jawed, and shake my head as she makes her slow, careful exit, eyes on the floor.  Then she's gone and I switch my bag to the other hand now, huffing and scanning the walls again.

I am really getting nervous about time -- I woke up late despite being excited about coming to Vermont and now am worried the trip I've been anticipating for months is about to become a hassle.

My turn now.  I put my bag and snowboots on the X-ray belt and head over to the metal detector line without hesitating like the dumbass people in front of me who held up the line.

The TSA agent, a pretty brunette, points at me and shakes her head.  Points at the giant test tube.  I suddenly have the feeling she's been looking at me for a while.  Shit.

I have no time to think.  I don't like the idea of these new "safety" practices, but dammit, I gotta get to Vermont!  No time for righteous social protest and demanding a pat-down on principle.

I step in the chamber, and a black guy in his 20s steps in next to me, mumbling stuff while looking forward.  I hold up my hand to stop him.  "I'm deaf."

He nods, smiles casually.  Points at the instruction sheet on the glass in front of me, and steps out.  The sheet is two sentences long, says to hold my hands up and bend my elbows.  There is a picture to demonstrate... just in case my comprehension falters.  I look at both text and image and obey. 

Whir-rumble.  This reminds me of getting an all-around X-ray at the dentist's office.  Even mid-whir, I'm scanning the instructions, trying to make sure I'm complying fully and seeming as non-terroristlike as possible. He beckons before I'm done re-reading, and points to a black pad on the floor on the other side of the chamber, gesturing towards stenciled yellow footprints in the middle.  I stand there, wondering what new screening procedure this is.  Around me, people are whizzing through metal detectors and rushing off to their gates.  I feel exposed, like someone else is back in line the way I was a few moments ago, watching me and mentally tsk-tsking.

I stare into the distance, trying to find gate D19.  I can only see up to D09.  I hope I don't have to run.  I am emphatically anti-airport running.  It's a philosophical stance from which I refuse to waver.

The TSA agent on my left, a pretty black young lady (why are they all so fricking young?  and when did I start thinking everyone around me was a child?!), waves for my attention, signs thank you, smiles.

I'm done.  And it took all of one minute.  Well, then.  That was surprisingly uncreepy.

I'm the last one on, but I do make my plane.  Without running.

Fotos of the Frottage Festival

(aka the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear.)

If you're looking for a cute little summary of my day at the rally, just head on over to Jennette's post.  Her day was pretty much the same as mine, except I was a lot more whiny and bitchy. 

And I didn't have "rally buddies" to ride with, just one pour soul I managed to irritate worse than hemorrhoids before we even got on the metro.

And there was no singing or warm fuzzy caramaderie that I'm aware of. 

And we spent a lot more time squeezing between people's asses trying to get over to the damn ADA-designated seating area so we could SEE something.

Turns out a lot of people shared the same experience, so I'm not as bummed about it anymore, and have resigned myself to calling it "an experience."  That, and praying somebody somewhere taped the damn thing so I can see what the hoopla was about.

Our first stop was the Glenmont metro station, where we waited for about half an hour just to buy a dang farecard:

Frustrated face:

We piled on at Glenmont, which is at the end of the red line, and this was my view for pretty much the entire ride on that line.  Anybody trying to get on the metro further down the line did not stand a chance in hell. Oh, and btw, guy in gray sweater standing one inch from my nose? DID NOT SHOWER. 

We got off Fort Totten, thinking we'd change lines and get to the rally via the Archives stop, which was the closest to the ADA section.  Fat chance.  Metro glided by and let us off at L'Enfant.  Cue more than two hours of frustrated frottage.  Oh, but the day had its highlights, like this sweet couple we exchanged hellos with at Fort Totten:

We finally got off at L'Enfant and... holy shit.

Escalators out of the station were not running.  Add that to the out of towners' strange walking and climbing behavior... and my bitching was at an all-time high.  On days like this, I should come with my own parental advisory label.

Finally we get out of L'Enfant Plaza, and we see an endless stream of people and lovely, lovely signs full of highly nuanced political discourse like: "WE DROVE WAY TOO FAR TO BE HERE." Mindboggling, especially considering by now it was a full 40 minutes into the rally:

 

When I stuck my arm up with my camera in hand, this is what my hand got to see.  Lucky damn hand. 

Me, on the other hand, I had to be content with getting very familiar with other people's scalp and dandruff issues.  And the occassional whipping my head about to see what was so funny when people started laughing.  Oh.  Right.  Hearing people.  Access.  Uh-huh.  Back to rubbing bodies with strangers.

 

So, after a couple hours of squeezing my body into tetris formation with legs and arms and backs and guts and other unmentionables that most definitely did not belong to me, we walked up 7th street and found a grassy knoll on which to loll about for a bit.  Finally got a close up look at SOMETHING:

Yay.

ASL terps provided at Colbert/Stewart Rally

Planning to keep fear alive with Stephen Colbert on the 30th in DC?

I contacted media liaison Renata Luczak from Comedy Central after not finding any info re: accessibility for deafies like me.  There was mention of accessible seating, but of course the implication of "accessible seating" is that it's for people who need, like, special chairs or something.  And it's my eyes that need access, not my ass.

Happily, Renata responded quite quickly and said not only will ASL terps be provided (just ask an event marshall to be directed to the appropriate area), they got so many requests for information that they ended up adding mention of interpreters to the rally's FAQs section.

First you're hearing of the event?  You need a life.  Go here (or here if you're a Stewart fan) and make your plans.

Does your phone company fund Tea Party candidates?

Got this in my e-mail from Bitch Magazine this week (click here for the entire pdf file, complete with clickable links -- especially the sources for their claims):

It's a tempting offer for Credo, a mobile provider that bills itself as "a proud sponsor of Bitch Media, and supports other progressive causes that work to create social impact. In fact, CREDO Mobile is the largest corporate donor to Planned Parenthood and the only vocally pro-choice phone company."

Furthermore, the offer is beautifully targeted, (complete with contract buyout credits) and effectively deployed. 

For one, Bitch only ever sends me e-mails that are either updates on how their staff and the magazine is doing or fundraising letters (the magazine is nonprofit and passionately subscriber-supported).  And it's more often the former than the latter, so this bait and switch is easy and always sucks me right in. 

Add in the headline about my very own phone company (use T-Mobile, Verizon, AT & T? Read the pdf file I link to above!) supporting politicans I (and a majority of the magazine's readers) happen to think are better off being weeded out of the gene pool, and you've got marketing gold.

I'm wondering, though, how much of a lost cause this political activism at the grassroots level stuff is.  So many of us default, for reasons related to our personal economies or geography and so forth, to being customers of businesses that have carte blanche over their political spending.

Need I remind you of the ruffled feathers some of us got over finding out about Target and Best Buy's donations to candidates who were largely viewed as contrarians to LGBT civil rights?  And Target is to me as heroin is to Courtney Love, circa mid-nineties (Yes. Yes, I AM getting as old as my references, thank you). 

Let's get a little nuanced here for a minute, people... one of my pet peeves is single-issue voters, i.e. those who will choose a candidate solely based on what they tell the press about gender and sex rights.  So if you're reading any endorsement (or lack thereof) here, stop it. Right now.

Any hoo, if you're like me, you think this political stuff is a lot to keep track of.  More so when you connect it to understanding where your money goes.

So this Bitch e-mail?  Good move. Veddy good move.

An open letter to Berin Szoka, aka the guy who thinks HR3101 is a bad idea

Dear Berin:

I have no clue if you remember me.  The last time we saw each other, we were in fifth grade, probably the dorkiest we'd ever be in our lives.  Here's the only pic of us I could find on short notice... you always seemed to wear striped shirts.  And I always seemed to wear... well, stuff.  Anything to detract from that awful perm.

I'll be honest.  I barely remember you.  But I do remember you were a smartass in geek's clothing.  And seeing as fifth grade was the last time I really got to know my classmates before some unspoken consensus to start treating the deaf students as untouchables took effect, I feel confident saying that.

I figure as far as faint memories, remembering that you were smart enough to sass the rest of us ain't half-bad, is it?

So it's been more than 20 years since I saw you last.  I never thought I'd see or hear of you again.  But I did.  And man, what a surprise it was.  See, I grew up to be a member of a thriving deaf community, one where I found support for the many ways the world didn't understand me (and some even the other deafies didn't). 

I guess you grew up to be some moderately sucessful lawyer, or some other position where you had enough authority bestown upon you by certain members of the hoi polloi to write an op-ed in a national paper arguing that people like me shouldn't complain and ask that the internet be made accessible, just like we've had to complain to make sure classrooms were accessible, movies, phones, airports... even the freaking doorbell and fire alarm.  You name the technological innovation, the deaf community has always had to fight to opt in.

In the grand scheme of things, your op-ed isn't really that important to me.  The bill is.

But here's the thing.  When I saw your name on that op-ed, I instantly flashed back to our schooldays.  I remember talking to you.  I remember my transliterator hovering over us, making sure communication was flowing smoothly (she's the redhead in the tan jacket at the left in the pic, btw.  And her presence had to be legislated too), not just that I understood you, but you understood me too.  I remember you staring at her, perplexed, and then slowly coming to realize that it was a good thing she was there.

And I could not believe that someone who spent time in one of the best mainstream programs for the deaf in the country could one day grow up to write one of the most thoughtless, reductive things about accommodations for people who have been disabled by their environment.

Frankly, Berin, the stuff you said was dumb. 

Let's see what you said that was so stupid, shall we?

First, you went into a fawning soliloquy about the wonders of technological advances.  "It made the digital revolution possible, and it's now extending the promise of that revolution to users with a wide variety of special needs," you wrote of the computer revolution.  As an example, you trotted out Voice Recognition Software.

Cue punch to the gut number one.

Did you even stop to think about what you were saying?  You spent at least part of your childhood trying to decipher my garbled utterances.  Yeah, I think voice recognition software is pretty damn cool.  And so do you -- "What's merely cool for many can be life-changing for the disabled," you said. 

This is where casting wide generalizations get you in trouble.  VRS is only good for a select few who are disabled by their environment in certain ways.  And for others, like me, it actually scares us when we think about a world where VRS is ubiquitous.  I'm gonna be in a real shithole, then, Berin.  And not at all independent like technology is supposed to make me.  What the hell am I supposed to do when a machine asks me for my voice ID, but doesn't offer any other method of input?  So, yeah.  Great for some people, not so great for others. 

This is the kind of Universal Design theory HR 3101 has in mind -- it asks that the internet be made accessible by making sure providers remember to, at the very least, provide adaptable interfaces.  So that certain media will be accessible to the blind, to the deaf, AND to the deaf-blind.

But your point?  That so many technological advances are being made everyday, it'll be to everyone's benefit eventually, and that disability group advocates are hampering the process by asking for access. 

"Despite such advances, many advocates for the disabled complain about the inaccessibility of some hardware interfaces, particularly for mobile devices, and want the government to force all device manufacturers to implement certain standard features. That's the wrong approach," you wrote.

Second sucker punch, Berin.

Those cool technological innovations of which you speak?  They were put there for a reason.  Because people need them, want them.  And when people need or want something, what is so wrong with asking for it?  And when it doesn't come, what?  You want us to wait for someone to think of it?

Right.  Like someone just invented the TV and then thought -- ooh, let's make sure what people say on TV is visible in the written word!  Yeah, right.  That was a long, hard-fought battle.  And we're still fighting.  Not nearly enough is captioned, still, today.

But let's see why you think it's the wrong approach: "'Equal access' to the latest gadgets may sound appealing, but policymakers should recognize that regulation will only stifle the innovations that could most help the disabled."

Ha.  You know what that sounds like? 

That sounds like the excuse Netflix Chief Product Officer Neil Hunt began writing when deaf members of Netflix started complaining that the instant-play feature that was part of their paid membership wasn't accessible to them.  "Captioning is in our development plans but is about a year away," he blogged.  He followed with reasons why it was too hard and restrictive to do it right now -- this, while at the very same moment he typed his blog, Hulu was broadcasting TV on demand, much of it with captioned content that pleased the masses. 

Or it sounds like the excuses lawyers for the Harkins theater chain in Arizona gave, arguing, "We have the right to choose what services we provide, and that is our choice... We let everyone come into our theaters and see our (non-captioned) movies, and that is what ADA requires us to do."  This, while theaters are dropping thousands upon thousands of dollars to support 3-D movie experiences.

You know what happened?  The judge laughed at them.

But I'm not laughing at you.  I'm really sad. 

Sad that you think we should let technological innovators have free rein to invent things that coddle and exclude, unstimulated by challenges like those that people like me represent. 

Innovation will be hindered by requests for access to said innovation?

Nonsense.  That defies the very definition of innovation.

Your complaint? "Accessibility mandates impose real costs, such as steeper prices, increased bulk and reduced functionality."

My answer?  Technology will find a way.  It always has.  We as a human race have always outdone ourselves in that arena, and we will continue to do so.

Berin, the NAD's response to your op-ed was far too easy on someone like you, who wants to tell someone like me, "it's too expensive and too much of a hassle for supergeniuses to accomodate you.  Just wait until whenever it gets cheaper. It'll happen... someday.  But for now, go sit quietly and stop it."  

If I recall correctly, in school, you were kind of a skinny little dweeb with a big voice.  I liked you anyway.

But, man, if I'd known you'd grow up to write this someday?  I'd have thrown that dodgeball at you so hard you'd have woken up a lot shorter than you already were. 

Hope you're well,
Allison (from Mrs. O'Brien's fifth grade class)

I hope you dance...

If you don't already subscribe to the Big Picture, get your lazy ass over there and do it now, you naughty elf.

Last week they posted two heartbreaking series of photos from Tehran (here and here). 

Now they're going the uplifting route, chronicling dancers all over the world.  Beautiful.  Serendipitous timing, too.  We need it.  And check out #19.  Bittersweet. 

This one's #3 in the series, from Belarus.  One of my faves, if only because they look so carefree.