"Articulate" Hurts Deaf People Too

Henry Kisor, one of my favorite authors, complained in his blog that presidential wannabe Senator Joe Biden's "compliment" to presidential wannabe Senator Barack Obama that he was "articulate," often stings him too, as Kisor is profoundly deaf:

Something similar, in my view, goes on when a well-meaning hearing stranger praises me for being articulate or “speaking well.” The dynamic isn’t quite the same — racism is not involved — but in some ways it is dead on. White folks tend to be surprised when black folks speak excellent standard English. Hearing folks tend to be surprised when deaf folks speak understandable standard English.

Many times people I’ve just met say “How well you speak!” as if it is a great surprise a deaf person’s speech can be understood at all. (Mine is quite imperfect but if you listen and there is no other sound to distract you, you’ll understand it.)

It irritates me because (as in the case of African-Americans and “articulate”) this kind of patronization comes from low and ignorant expectations of the capabilities of deaf people.

(if you don't know Henry Kisor, he was the longtime Book Editor of the Chicago Sun-Times, now retired in Michigan's UP.  Kisor's 1997 book on his fulfilling a dream of becoming a pilot and reenacting a historic 1911 solo cross-country flight ("Flight of the Gin Fizz: Midlife at 4,500 feet") is a gem for anyone who has ever caught the flying bug, and his 1994 portrait of the state of American railroading ("Zephyr: Tracking A Dream Across America") is one of my favorite travel books. Kisor has more recently been writing mysteries set in the UP;  I have it on good authority that the murder victim in the next one is a blonde bombshell schoolteacher from Madison who has "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here" tattooed in cursive script above her groin.)

Kisor had the best Art Buchwald tribute I've read yet:

... I wrote in a review of a very funny collection of essays by Calvin Trillin that Trillin was “the thinking man’s Art Buchwald.” I thought at the time I was complimenting both men, but I was too obtuse to see that the remark was left-handed about Buchwald.

When his publisher plucked the quote for an advertisement, Trillin had great fun twitting his pal Buchwald about it. Realizing my error, I wrote a little note of apology to Buchwald.

“It’s OK,” he wrote back. “Just make me the thinking man’s Calvin Trillin in your next review of a book of mine.”

Of course I couldn't do that, because it would have been a conflict of interest. But now I have the opportunity.

The world of journalism has lost its thinking man’s Calvin Trillin.

The world of journalism lost its thinking man's book editor when Kisor retired.

- Barry Orton