While I know I’m certainly not the first, may I be, at least, the next person to write about the power we give to the often poorly chosen and often misguided names and words we use?
In yet another tale from the “You Can Take The Boy Out Of The Newsroom, But You Can’t Take The Newsroom Out Of The Boy” chronicles, there were certain words and phrases believed to possess almost talismanic powers over viewers. Magical incantations that would cause men, women, children and some of the more intelligent species of dogs to put down the remote, jump out of the kitchen, the laundry room or the tub, or emerge from underneath the sheets (where they were sleeping, of course. This is, at least nominally, a family blog), and give their rapt and undivided attention to whatever the demographically approved anchor is reading. Lower level incantations included, “take a look at this,” or “you won’t believe…” are sprinkled throughout even the most mundane of stories. Words like “amazing,” “unbelievable” and “shocking” are also the standard salt and pepper of any rundown. The favorite, however, and by several lengths is the phrase “breaking news.”
You may be wondering about the lively internal debates that ended up determining just how old a story has to be before it no longer qualifies as breaking news. The answer is… this debate has never, ever happened, and that there is no expiration date for this phrase. I’ve sat through morning story meetings where the producer decides at 9 a.m. which story was going to be labeled as breaking news for the six o’clock show, unless of course, he said, with a wistful and longing expression, there was a good shooting or a plane crash. This has happened. A lot. With proper scripting, the general feeling is that as long as there is any thread left to pull from the story sweater, it can be promoted as breaking news. “Continuing developments on a breaking news story…” is one scripting solution for a story that has long stopped breaking. “Here’s the latest information on news breaking out of…” is another. My favorite is “Breaking news from this morning continues to break…” which led to a live shot of a reporter outside a restaurant that had been damaged by fire more than twelve hours ago. “Breaking news” is a pairing of boy-who-cried-wolf words which have lost their power to convey meaning, and the only people who haven’t realized this yet are the people who use them. When you hear them, you can usually disregard the immediacy or urgency of what you’re about to hear.
However, using this tactic is mostly harmless in the grand scheme of things. Most people aren’t going to start heading into the storm cellars or begin preparing for a zombie apocalypse type event just because a twenty three year old producer making nineteen thousand dollars a year is instructed by a consultant to season their casts with a steady diet of questionable breaking news graphics, first weather alerts and news from your neighborhood. They are, however, an indication of the power of words to blur meaning and effectiveness. I’m seeing this now, when I notice how so very many people choose to describe, or more likely, not to describe people like me.
Let’s talk about being handicapped.
“Handicapped” is a word that is almost completely out of vogue, except in reference to parking spaces, and even there it’s not in as regular use as it once was. The general feeling is that “handicapped” is synonymous with “bad word.” That it’s an unkind or insensitive word to use for someone who is blind, deaf, in a wheelchair, or has any number of… you know what word is coming… disabilities, one of the more recent replacement words for handicapped. However, if you feel safer or more comfortable using the word “disabled,” you may be behind the times yourself. Some of the more fashionable phrases I’ve heard recently include differently abled, differently enabled, challenged, impaired and so very many more.
It’s long since turned into a joke. People who are short joke about being “vertically challenged.” I was at a dinner party earlier this spring and one of the guests , while complaining about the high cost of living in San Francisco, referred to herself as “financially impaired.” I think the desire to be sensitive and understanding has failed when self-described sensitive and understanding people use their own tools against themselves.
So I ask… what’s wrong with having a handicap?
I don’t think this sentiment should be seen as an argument for or against what is commonly known as “political correctness.” I think it’s more an argument in favor of clarity and honesty. It’s my belief that using “sensitive” words under the umbrella of equality or sensitivity actually makes people less equal. As simply as I can say it (too late, I know), there is no word that will make a person less blind, less deaf, less wheelchair bound… less handicapped. There are words you can use that will make you feel better because they are so amorphous that they have no real meaning – they certainly seem less rough around the edges (the operative word being “seem:”), but that doesn’t actually help anyone.
As a matter of fact, I think the constant effort to choose new words under the guise of compassion actually makes things worse, and does a disservice to the purpose of language itself. Take the word “disabled.” At its root, the prefix “dis” means “not.” Describing a paraplegic, for example, as “disabled” is saying they are not able. To me, this leads to the inevitable question “not able to… what?” Yes, I know. Not able to walk. I get it. My point, though, is that it shines a spotlight on the very qualities that the paraplegic would most likely rather deal with and move on from, rather than using words that force everyone to dwell on it. Using a supposedly more sensitive word does not salve any wound and does not solve any problem. I feel the same way about a current popular phrase – “differently abled.” I’ve wondered… how exactly is my diminishing eyesight, in and of itself, a different ability? Or, to put it another way, is anyone really under the impression that the blind really have different abilities than the sighted? While I do use the other tools at my disposal – hearing and touch chiefly among hem, to help navigate the world, they do not “take over,” or become Daredevil like super-senses. No more than I would imagine a deaf person would gradually begin to start being able to visualize the infrared and ultraviolet ranges of the spectrum. No, there is no such thing as different abilities.
I’m on the fence about the word “impaired,” because this one, I think is, on occasion, a factually accurate description. For me, living in a world of very limited sight, the vision I do have is actually quite impaired… by inflammation and swelling inside my eye that is not resolving itself, but a silicon oil implant that while keeping what remains of my retina intact, is itself a major impediment to present and future functional sight and a threat to my cornea, and more contributing factors than I can shake a stick at… not that stick shaking does any good). I can see the value in descriptive phrases like “hearing impaired,” and even “mobility impaired.”
Still, though, I wonder if the general descriptor “handicapped” doesn’t just save a lot of time, along with having the added benefit of being clear and correct..
As any golfer knows, if you shoot in the 90’s, and you play in a tournament against someone who shoots par, you are issued a handicap. And the handicap is what enables you to compete on an even playing field. Your handicap is your greatest strength.
A level playing field. Isn’t that kind of the point?
The way I see it, my lack of functional eyesight is not what handicaps me. My handicap is whatever it takes to level the playing field. It’s the cane I use to make sure I can find the curb. It’s the trekking pole I use to find the rocks and drop-offs on the trail. It’s the screen magnification software on my computer that I’m using right now to write this post and the text-to-speech feature I’ll use to edit it. It’s he monocular in my pocket, and the adaptive technology in my office. My handicaps are the forces working in my favor – every last person who realizes on an instinctive level that I am not disabled, differently enabled or permanently impaired or challenged. I face challenges but I am not challenged. In my very humble opinion, we started going off the rails with descriptive phrases the moment we decided that rather than facing the very difficult task of addressing the underlying issue: that the real problem is that too many people are too uncomfortable being around people with a handicap, and if they can just come up with a word that has the descriptive equivalent of a creamy chocolate coating and a rich nougat center, everything will be all right. There is no such word, and there never will be, so it seems like a better idea to come to terms with the perfectly good words we already have. Feeling good about alternative words and phrases in place of the very serviceable word “handicap” does absolutely no good when it comes to eliminating the underlying discomfort too many people feel when they are around people with handicaps. If eliminating an illness or injury is the goal… well, I’m in favor of that, and of every very difficult challenge behind that, but I’m not in favor of feel-good measures.
I would say this. As long as I can’t do something, then yes, I am disabled. As soon as I can do what any other person can do, I’m working with a handicap. Bring it.
Oh, and bacon flavored ice cream? It’s just wrong. It tastes funny and weird, and you should just have chocolate instead.
