In Defence of Libraries

As a news junkie in this political environment, I keep both blogging eyes open to anything that crosses my path which threatens something precious to me. With the teabaggers in office, this happens more than I care for, and I've signed endless arrays of petitions to save various services related to disability, public broadcasting, reproductive rights, and other issues. This time though, I'm going to talk about one which is less headline-worthy, but I think is just as fundamentally important, and deserves to be protected from onslaughts of misguided right-wing stupidity.

I'm talking of course, about libraries.

Amendment #35 would eliminate all IMLS funding specifically for libraries, and leave those that depend on library resources and services high and dry. Libraries not only breathe life into the souls of bibliophiles of all ages, they are a godsend for the poor who cannot afford their own computers or internet access, and rely on the public library in their community to ensure that they can access the internet for job hunting, government searches, and using the web to keep in contact with family, friends and loved ones. When I was internet-devoid for a while, my library proved an invaluable resource, especially during a period when I was filing for SSI benefits and needed to check my student email and use Blackboard. And blog for you dear readers of course.

This goes beyond shafting the poor though. I've come to expect that from the GOP. There's something considerably more sinister about wanting to dis-empower libraries. It is an attack on knowledge and love of learning (philio-sophos, do those words look familiar?) itself. It is an almost guaranteed way of ensuring a deepening poverty of the mind for the youth of America. When I was a child, books were my greatest friend. In a childhood characterized by isolation from my peers, I found solace in books, and when I would scroll down aisles glancing at the author's names on the spines, I dreamed of one day having my own name on a spine in the library.

So from an early age, books were my gateway to a love of writing and illustrating my own books (My greatest childhood memory is winning a prize at my school for a book I illustrated and wrote about a group of space girls travelling to all the different planets in the solar system. Back then, that included Pluto!) and offered me a comforting activity which instilled the germs from which curiosity, creativity and critical thinking emerged. Without those three C's, life would be considerably more colourless, cheerless, and confined to much greater limits.

I'm sure hoping that that's not what those who wish to cut the life out of libraries have in mind with this Amendment. But it is an inevitable side effect which will do more harm to the collective American childhood than any pennies saved ever could justify.

Protect our libraries and the bibliophiles to come who will need them.

A quick random thought about ageism

Last night, I was doing my usual midnight-on-vacation activity of surfing the internet before bed, and came across an amusing cartoon on Alas, A Blog. The comic, which was hilarious, involved Bernie Sanders, someone whom I've grown to admire and whose guts and integrity make me glad he's in politics. I posted it to facebook, with the message, "Love the bit about Bernie Sanders. Like a dear old coot like him would ever pick up anything more deadly than a pie chart."

Two seconds after I posted it, I thought over the word choice I elected: "Coot". I usually thought of it as a loving, endearing term, grandfatherly in a way, admiring. But it occurred to me I had never learned what it actually meant, so I looked it up on the Free Online Dictionary. "Definition: An eccentric or crotchety old person, usually an eccentric old man." I felt a bit uneasy. Eccentricity isn't in and of itself a bad thing, and I don't shy away from labelling myself as eccentric sometimes. But I am also aware that it is used as a coded term for someone who is not quite rational, someone who does not follow reason or common sense. Sanders, a self-described Democratic Socialist, much like myself, is probably frequently a target of such coded language. I can easily imagine his fellow Democrats calling him that in privy, as a way of saying that while his courage is admirable, his ideas and convictions are not to be taken seriously.

I thought of other words used to describe men of a certain age like Sanders, who didn't really fit into the dominant paradigm. Codger: "An elderly man, usually eccentric or old-fashioned". Old goat. Pops. I was reminded of Mike Gravel, whose failed 2008 presidential campaign was marked by many ideas I agreed with which mainstream Democratic candidates shunned subtly: Legalized marijuana use, gay marriage made legal, immediate end to occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan, a lockdown on the sway of the Military Industrial Complex. Gravel was not given the same respect as Bill Richardson, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama. The mainstream media treated him like a quaint, harmless old man with amusing ideas who was good fodder for amusing jokes.

With this reflection, I realized how closely disablism is tied to ageism. When you are young, mental disabilities are treated as frightening, unfortunate, and a precursor to violent actions. Elderly individuals however, are given an equally odious treatment: The intellectual validity of their opinions is almost always discarded, and they are treated with amusement and disregard. Even those who are not disabled in any way are treated like their opinions are a product of an imperfected mind, due to their age.

Neurotypicality equates disability with a breakdown of a "healthy" and "whole" mind, and therefore sees disability as an inevitable byproduct of ageing. The fact that it is attributed to "breakdown" is why youthful mental disabilities are tragic in the social narrative as well.

But it has the same root: The idea that disability can be equated with incompetence, stupidity, and lack of common sense. It condescends people with disabilities and those assumed to be disabled in some way, pushing us into the corner. Our language reinforces this by equating being aged with being "odd" or "off-kilter".

Well, time to hunt the dictionary for a more interesting way to refer to older people who give me courage and cause an upsurge of admiration in me.

President Aspie: Or, I'm sick of armchair diagnoses

So, Crooks & Liars, a known American liberal blog, posted this podcast recorded by two people known as "The Professional Left", titled, "Hey Obama, Get Your Head Out Of Your Asperger's".

My first and most immediate reaction, which has been my de facto reaction to stimuli as of late, was as follows, "What the everflowing milk of human kindness?!?!"

See, I was confused and irritated, expecting I'd run across a typical "disability as a metaphor" joke that's so common to both liberal and conservative media, but with the liberals I get more annoyed because I expect more from them.

So I listened to the podcast, and shut it off in disgust after the part about Asperger Syndrome was finished. There was no transcript available(If anyone wants to brave their way through the podcast and make one, be my guest, I'll do a proper one later Edit: Lindsay of Autist's Corner did a terrific analysis and transcript here: http://autistscorner.blogspot.com/2010/12/more-disagreeing-by-diagnosing-aspie-in.html), but the dialogue went along the lines of: (highly paraphrased here)

Woman: So I have this theory.... (chatter about anticipating what this amazing new revelation could be)

Man: I'm girding my loins [in anticipation]!

Woman: I think our president has high functioning Asperger Syndrome! It's becoming more obvious now the way he reacts to everything, he's so much like Spock, the Star Trek character, you know? And he doesn't display emotions and he is logical and rational, and so many other traits. And he focuses on the little details instead of the big picture!

Man: Well, that could be it, I mean we understand these traits about Aspergers and that end of the spectrum as being....

[Continue intersliced with boring rabble about Wikileaks, constitutional law, imperial presidency, and not listening to the American people with obnoxious laughter and ham-fisted jokes about nerdiness based on the Spock reference]

I was frozen. There's not much more I can focus on here that hasn't been covered before. Typical Bingo fodder. Comparisons to Spock? Check. Devoid of Emotion Card? Check. Stereotyping all autistics as being uniformly like this? Double check.

But what irked me the most about this is that when the American people were at an all time euphoria about Obama, he was compared to Spock, and Superman, and other idols of nerd culture, but the "A" word never came up. Now, progressives are finding a few walloping things wrong with his decisionmaking and snubbing of progressives, and now it's so convenient to label him with autism or some other type of "disorder" or invisible disability. Disability need not apply to people when they're doing what you think is right, but the moment you find fault with them, disabilities begin to be thrown about, and always the negative stereotypical traits are thrown in too. Never would it be suggested (At least while he is alive, see Einstein and Newton) that Obama has Asperger Syndrome for an exceptional trait which makes him a fine leader. Always focus on what makes them different, not good. Same for Narcissistic Personality, or Psychopathic Personality, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, or now, Asperger Syndrome. Yay. Or just happily labelling anyone who disagrees with you as part of the Loonie Left, or a Wingnut, or a Right Wing Nutjob, having "Nazi Tourettes", having some type of ADD or ADHD, or a Crazy [Insert noun] or Republitard.

How delightful to know that the mentally and intellectually disabled are so disposable.

For the record, I find it highly doubtful that Obama has Asperger Syndrome or autism of any kind. The closest connection I can find between him and autism is his historic appointment of Ari Ne'eman.