Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!uakari.primate.wisc.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!usc!cs.utexas.edu!yale!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!90!Gary.Petraccaro
From: Gary.Petraccaro@f90.n129.z1.fidonet.org (Gary Petraccaro)
Newsgroups: misc.handicap
Subject: Re: Chances Are!
Message-ID: <12563@bunker.UUCP>
Date: 28 Jun 90 16:59:49 GMT
Sender: wtm@bunker.UUCP
Reply-To: Gary.Petraccaro@f90.n129.z1.fidonet.org
Distribution: misc
Organization: FidoNet node 1:129/90 - Post Road Inn, Greensburg PA
Lines: 39
Approved: wtm@bunker.UUCP

Index Number: 8978

[This is from the Blink Talk Conference]

David,

     I don't know how much the safety issue positions sighted people take
owes to their prejudices and neither, with all respect, do you.  Likewise,
as it is convenient for me to assume goodwill on most people's part it is
inconvenient for you to do so.  So, okay, all motives are adulterated and
none are pure, this is news?  Frankly, were I sighted I would have just
about had it with the constant invalidation of my feelings and opinions I'd
receive from the civil rights berserkers.  Well, you know what's often said
about crying wolf.  One day the cry of "you're prejudiced, you don't have a
right to draw your conclusions!" will go out once too often and the reply
will come back, "since I'm such a loathesome jerk that I can't trust my own
judgment, I can't trust my judgment about your claims.  Might as well
disregard it, and you, and continue on as I have in the past, being a
contemptable, insensative jerk."  Of course, I'm not sighted.  Most sighted
people are far more indulgent than I.  That's why I was outraged by a
particular show in the EMPTY NEST series.

     This show, for those unfamiliar, deals with a father and two sisters
living in Miami.  One sister is a happy-go-lucky sort and the other worries
about practically everything.  The latter sister meets an absolute troll of
a blind man; self-centered, manipulative, obnoxious--not any charicature we
have all seen, but just a real bastard who happens to be blind.  Here
reaction after several dates?  "Never saw a cloud, never saw a tree."
After the last date, she finally gets to the point of saying, "you're a bad
blind man."  Now me, I'd just have punched out the slime ball and not
bothered with the self abuse this woman put herself through.  But, you know
what?  My contempt for the "blind man" was as nothing compared to my pity
and horror at what this woman had done to herself.  Most people, I suspect,
won't have as long a string as she did.  Eventually, they will get pretty
tired of having it pulled.

--
Uucp: ..!{decvax,oliveb}!bunker!hcap!hnews!129!90!Gary.Petraccaro
Internet: Gary.Petraccaro@f90.n129.z1.fidonet.org