when they refuse to deal with a fact straight-on, but have to chase 'round the barn to say it's something it's not.
What brought this on was some show I had on in the background about people working with disabled animals and putting together prosthetics for them. You keep hearing people say "I don't see a disabled pony, I see a pony that needed some help", or "This is not a disabled pig, it gets along quite well" and so forth.
Lady, the pony had a MISSING LEG; that IS disabled. That the artificial leg lets it get around doesn't change that.
Dude, that pig was born with NO HIND LEGS; that IS disabled. The fact that you put together a cart for its back end so it can get around is wonderful, but doesn't change the fact that it IS disabled; there's nothing disgraceful or horrible about noting that fact.
Reminds me of all the PC crap about how people who are deaf or crippled or whatever "...are NOT disabled, they're DIFFERENTLY-ABLED!" Which is bullshit. Dealt with well by Denny on one occasion when some well-meaning twit told him he was just 'differently-abled': I believe the statement was "Lady, I'm CRIPPLED; I can deal with it, why can't you?"
2 comments:
that habit has its darker side too:
" In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defence of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenceless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, “I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so”. Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:
“While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.”"
Orwell, Politics and the English Language
I don't like the term "disabled." It implies, if not denotes, an inability.
I prefer "handicapped" which implies a limitation of some abilities. My daughter is handicapped, but not disabled, by her lack of sight. I am handicapped, not disabled, by my COPD.
MichigammeDave
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