Worst pun ever.
Logging in to my site meter account this morning, I noticed something odd. This blog received four hits between between 9 and 10am. Granted, my hits are down, but four in an hour seemed a bit ridiculous. And wouldn't you know it, Blogspot crashed. I still can't see the blog. But I can post on it! So, this ought to be interesting. If I miss a typo or something, please be kind.
A morning without DCeiver, Fire Joe Morgan, Touching All the Bases, the train wreck that is Why I Hate DC comments, and most of my friends' blogs is just unfair. You have to ease in to the work day, you know?
I hate it when free services that I take for granted break down.
Anyways, I wanted to share my two cents on this Gallaudet debacle. If anything it proves that hearing impaired college students can be dickheads just like anyone else. Holding your university hostage because you don't like the new incoming president? Boo fucking hoo.
I can't imagine a situation being handled more immaturely by a group of people. It's cool if students think that the incoming school president, Jane K. Fernandes, isn't right for the university. It's something different when one of the reasons for Ms. Fernandes unsuitability is that she isn't deaf enough. Fernandes didn't learn sign language until she was in her 20s? Who cares!? She's still deaf. It's not a school for the deaf/mute, it's a school for the deaf. If you fuckers had the ability to talk, you would fucking use it.
Any disenfranchised group of people willing to throw members of its constituency off the bus is going about things all wrong. Can you imagine if Frederick Douglass was ignored by the 19th Century abolitionist movement because he wasn't black enough? (Douglass's father was white.)
Another thing college students need to figure out is that they don't have the same power as administrators and professors. Why? Well, administrators and professors are employees. Students, on the other hand, are paying customers. They pay a lot of money for a very expensive service. Students shutting down Gallaudet is like Whole Foods customers shutting down grocery stores because they don't like the new CEO. Sorry, kids. You don't get, and you don't deserve, that much of a say.
"The whole school is speaking now," said junior Chris Corrigan, a protest leader. Students announced in an e-mail that there had been a coup d'universite and that they no longer recognized [I. King] Jordan as president.
Jordan, who has been a civil rights hero to many deaf people since student protests carried him into office nearly 20 years ago, making him the first deaf university president, stood in a mass of emotional protesters demanding answers yesterday morning."
Now the students are throwing a hero of their cause under the bus? Why? because, like many other dickhead college students, these people are going to college to make a difference and prove that they should be treated as adults and what not. Of course, mature adults wouldn't get their panties all in a bunch over something as trite as this.
I remember my freshman experience at American University. We had hordes of kids who were just hoping that they would get an opportunity to "make a difference." When we invaded Afghanistan in 2001 they were the first ones to stop traffic at Ward Circle and handcuff themselves to the Homeland Security fences on Nebraska Avenue. Washington, DC is a magnet for these "make a difference" douchebags who want a good protest story to tell their grandchildren. They are fucking phonies and don't deserve any of the attention they crave.
Now Gallaudet students are going down the same road. Instead of reasonable protests, they're shutting down the school. And for what? For something that will have almost no impact on their lives.
Gallaudet students need to realize what they're in school for. It's not to shut down the university by exercising your newfound clout. It's to get an education. Which means going to classes. Which means NOT SHUTTING DOWN THE SCHOOL! I'm sorry that you don't like your new president. Please get over it immediately.
10.12.2006
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Plus they really have trouble staying in sync when chanting protests.
ReplyDeleteIf you kick a deaf/mute in the balls in the forest, does he make a sound?
ReplyDeleteMost college protests are lame and irrelevant. Expect to see more of them as tutition levels increase and only the rich and out-of-touch can afford to go.
ReplyDeleteYeah, those Gallaudette students are radical, but not as radical as some of the student protestors at MIT!
ReplyDeleteI mean, did you see how they handled that Thorne-Hawking-Preskill bet? OMG! It was like you had one group shouting "Hey man, general relativity makes it impossible for a quantum singularities to radate mass-energy past the even horizon!"
And then you had the other group of dudes turning over cars and shouting back, "Dude! Black holes totally flucuate in accordance with quanum mechanics as long as general relativity principles are properly modified!"
It was freakin' AWESOME!
I've always been a little confused by this protest. Granted, I don't know all of the facts, but isn't opposing a "not deaf enough" president sort of cutting off your nose to spite your face? The fact of the matter is, in this day and age, one of the MAJOR duties of a school's president is to drum up support (i.e. $$$$). Wouldn't you want a president who can effectively communicate the needs and desires of the school to parents, alumni, and others outside the University community, regardless of whether they are deaf or not? I'm sorry, but most people in American don't know ASL, and most people in America find communicating with a "truly" deaf person difficult.
ReplyDeleteIf only Jimmy and Timmy could work their magic like they did with the Five Points Bloods and Crips.
Great entry, Rusty. I hope they arrest all of those deaf people and throw them in an institution where they belong!
ReplyDeleteSorry Rusty, you're way off base on this one. From what I hear, this issue is WAY more complicated that the Post's sporadic coverage (poor Post coverage? Amazing!) suggests, and damn near impossible to understand for someone not plugged into the deaf community.
ReplyDeletePlus, the fact that a majority of the students and faculty are either actively participating in the protests or at least sympathizing with the protesters should tell you that there's a lot of popular support for the struggle. So you're talking out of your ass here.
I'd have thought coming from AU (as I do) you'd have more sympathy for student protests as well, especially since I'm sure that was some of your tuition money that Ladner was pissing away on his kid's engagement party, as well as his $4 million golden parachute. More often than not I think college protests are legit; in fact, there probably aren't enough of them.
If they want to protest, fine. But they aren't just protesting. They're shutting down the school. Was Fernandes's acenstion to the presidency legit? Maybe not. No excuse to intimidate people trying to go to class.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the "not deaf enough" argument is absolutely crazy.
Also, the "not deaf enough" argument is absolutely crazy.
ReplyDeleteWhy? they're all deaf and that's the raison d'tre of the school. Why is that so crazy?
It's crazy because she is deaf. It's not like she can hear just fine. The equivalent, and a better example than my Frederick Douglass analogy, would be not allowing a light-skinned black man be president of the NAACP.
ReplyDeleteNot black enough!
Who cares!? He/She is still black and faces many of the same difficulties as the group's constituency.
I was changing the channels yesterday with the volume turned down and was shocked at what I saw... I thought I had stumbled upon groups of retarded looking white kids throwing up gang signs on the news.
ReplyDeleteFirst of all, she's the one saying that OTHER people are saying she's not deaf enough. I haven't heard anyone protesting saying that. So basically, it looks like she's throwing up a bogus argument just so she can make the students look ridiculous. So I think we can move on from talking about this.
ReplyDeleteSecond, I wish we had shut down the damn school when Ladner was getting his $4 million because you know what, then people notice and things get done. The fact is, the protest at Galludet IS working. Their greivances are being heard and addressed. AU students played by the rules, wrote letters, and what have we got to show for it? $4 million fewer dollars and an irredeemably corrupt Board of Trustees. Yeah, good for us.
Not "deaf" enough. Isn't that sort of like not being "black" enough. What a crock of shit.
ReplyDeleteTalk about intolerance. THAT comes from all sides, liberal buddy.
(I don't feel sad about that b/c some deaf girls were "signing" about me on the train and I think they were making fun of my clothes.)
ted's liver,
ReplyDeleteyou continue to astound me by continually disagreeing w/ me 100%. You are such a jackass. You have the dumbest opinions ever, you gaywad.
*envious sigh* wish My daddy shelled out forty grand a year for me to learn to bleet in unison.
ReplyDeleteanywho, you know how important it is for group-representative figureheads to fit the public's preconcieved notions of that group. this is unusual only in the specifics. deafs. and because now we can get all into silly logistics like is lip-reading against the rules too?
bah. oh yeah btw; i c*nt hear you... twat did you say? [couldn't help it]
2 correct blogs in as many days? I will have to agree with you on this topic. Hell I am hearing impaired and cannot for the life of ME understand any college pukes now days.
ReplyDeleteKILL EM' ALL
ReplyDeleteLET GOD SORT EM' OUT
"This issue is WAY more complicated that the Post's sporadic coverage "
ReplyDeleteAlright Joe... so what is it about? What's the big unreported story? What's the coverup? Hmmm?
Why don't you enlighten us instead of bashing Rusty the whole time?
If my parents were only shelling out 5 grand a year and I doing some nonsense like that my parents would disown me.
ReplyDeleteFucking deaf priveleged crybabies.
When they're talking about her not being "deaf enough," they're talking culturally deaf, not just physiologically. There's a difference.
ReplyDeleteJesus Tapdancing Christ.
ReplyDeleteGranted, I will never understand what it means to be deaf. On the other hand, seeing as deafness is something that can be acquired, what kind of attitude would they have towards an intellectual like Hawking or Cornel West if they lost their hearing and took an interest in Galludet?
All this "deaf culture" and disdain for the outside world makes me wonder if they're just plain dumb.
I live right by Galludet. Some of those kids are assholes. one kids mom bought him a house on my block and they throw a lot of parties there. the parties arent quiet either. they make these loud retard sounds. I liked it better when they were scared to come out of the compound of Gallaudet. Damn gentrification!
ReplyDeleteThe point here isn't that anyone is too deaf or not deaf enough.
ReplyDeleteThe point here, IMHO, is that we all have to deal with shit we don't like at some point in our lives, and learn to make the best of it.
What are these kids going to do when they have a job and a manager, director or CEO is hired and they don't agree with it? Quit their jobs? Go on strike until they get their way? I'm not favoring passitivity. I'm just making the point that we can't always have things thy way we want them. It's part of -gasp- adulthood...something that we're supposed to get better at while in college.
Culturally deaf enough or not, whatever it is they think....can that really impede her ability to run a university? They haven't even given her the OPPORTUNITY to show them what she can do! Let her sit in office for a year. If she sucks, let it be known.
I like HRH King Friday XIII's comments.
ReplyDeleteRight on, Rusty. These kids are idiots and not living in the real world.
ReplyDeleteCulturally deaf? Have you seen most other college presidents? What do 65 y.o. white men know about college culture?
This is about them not liking something they have no right to bitch about and taking an absurd approach to changing it. If it wouldn't screw over the university in the public eye I'd say arrest all of them.
DONT GET MAD
ReplyDeleteNUKE THE BASTARDS
One kids mom bought him a house near there? Holy Shit! Property in that area runs in the 550k plus range. Fucking spoiled brats.
ReplyDeleteWow! They are arresting the kids right now on the news as I type this. I have never heard so many retards yelling and screaming together at the same time. Very scary. Even scarier the retards getting arrested and carried away by police are being cheered at by onlookers almost as if they are celebrities arriving at some sort of retard red carpet award ceremony. Thank GOD I do not live near there anymore. What a waste of parent's tuition money and even and even bigger waste of tax payer dollars.
ReplyDeleteI don't think the "not black enough" analogy is valid. Fernades was quoted saying advances in genetics would soon be to the point where potential parents could choose not to have a deaf child. Think about the implications of something like that to Gallaudet students.
ReplyDeleteShe may as well have said, "Given the choice, your parents wouldn't have had you".
Now put a similar statement in the mouth of Douglass - with advances in genetics, no more black children will ever have to be born - you see how that analogy fails.
I'm not a regular reader of this blog, just killing time before I go to work, but I think you might be missing some of the complexities of this.
Ok well I think the whole having a choice at having a deaf child is a little bit radical, but let's get into the specifics of that. If you were having a kid, and you had a 4 month old fetus in you, right? because i dont know how early on you could detect that a fetus would grow to be deaf, isnt that getting into the whole abortion issue? i think if youre that far along in a pregnancy, youd have to be a fucking asshole to abort a developing fetus because it's going to be deaf. This isnt' about science, it's about fucking morals, and this country needs to learn some.
ReplyDeleteThis comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDeleteDan and I decided, these Gallaudet kids are faking. They just need a night with the Acid Queen.
ReplyDeleteI support dissent and the right to free speech and assembly just like the next American. However, these students went too far with their protests by shutting down the campus. They held an entire university hostage because they opposed the incoming president. That's an extreme measure that could come back to haunt them down the road.
ReplyDeleteThe protestors have two choices: either come to grips that the deaf community is moving closer to the hearing community thanks to medical advances OR keep the deaf community in isolation.
Imagine if blind people demanded that they should only work for a fellow blind person? Deaf activists take extreme measures to isolate themselves from the hearing world. They only respect authority from fellow deaf persons. Those radical student protestors remind me of the Black Panther movement or Black Muslims. These African American groups have nothing but hatred for non-black people.
"Retards"? It's alarming how much that word showed up in these comments. I thought we were talking about people who are deaf. Do you people enjoy being intolerant assholes? Does it make you feel better in your day? If so, there is a group that meets in West Virginia you might liek to join. So many of you have invested a lot of energy in having an opinion on this, but what do you know about it really?
ReplyDeleteOnly one person wrote "retards." One too many, but let's pick our battles here.
ReplyDelete