Retarded tweet - and the response

Just wow. The response from John Franklin Stephens, I mean.

After Ann Coulter referred to President Obama as a retard in a tweet during a 2012 presidential debate, Special Olympics athlete and global messenger John Franklin Stephens wrote this open letter:

Dear Ann Coulter,

Come on Ms. Coulter, you aren't dumb and you aren't shallow. So why are you continually using a word like the R-word as an insult? ...

I'm a 30 year old man with Down syndrome who has struggled with the public's perception that an intellectual disability means that I am dumb and shallow. I am not either of those things, but I do process information more slowly than the rest of you. In fact it has taken me all day to figure out how to respond to your use of the R-word last night.

I thought first of asking whether you meant to describe the President as someone who was bullied as a child by people like you, but rose above it to find a way to succeed in life as many of my fellow Special Olympians have.

Then I wondered if you meant to describe him as someone who has to struggle to be thoughtful about everything he says, as everyone else races from one snarkey sound bite to the next.

Finally, I wondered if you meant to degrade him as someone who is likely to receive bad health care, live in low grade housing with very little income and still manages to see life as a wonderful gift.

Because, Ms. Coulter, that is who we are – and much, much more.

After I saw your tweet, I realized you just wanted to belittle the President by linking him to people like me. You assumed that people would understand and accept that being linked to someone like me is an insult and you assumed you could get away with it and still appear on TV.

I have to wonder if you considered other hateful words but recoiled from the backlash.

Well, Ms. Coulter, you, and society, need to learn that being compared to people like me should be considered a badge of honor.

No one overcomes more than we do and still loves life so much.

Come join us someday at Special Olympics. See if you can walk away with your heart unchanged.

A friend you haven't made yet,
John Franklin Stephens
Global Messenger & Special Olympics Virginia

 

 Got the text from "Sue Fitzmaurice, Author", here: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=694488930572050&set=a.509153389105606.112928.508972909123654&type=1.

There is some sense in what she is saying in a response - that some words enter the language and start to mean something similar as the original ... though it seems to me this is still a very, very touchy subject.

  Plus, words have power. Power to change. (This is the first thing motivational/self-development guru's will tell you.) If we refer to specific sub-culture or minority or group of people in a particular way, we label them. Put them in box. Nobody wants to be labelled, ladies and gents. Nobody wants to be in a box. Because it's hard to get out of it again. And - as an extreme example - a lot of killing was justified by labelling.

  That's the oldest trick in the book, for turtle's sake! First, you make a group "invalid", un-normal, thereby dehumanising them to some extent. Then you trample some more of their rights. Then you go for other groups who oppose you or who people could hate (and thereby support your action against them). Yes? No? I mean, it's all there in the history books, if they haven't changed them yet.

I posted another entry on the matter of able-ism (a word I've never heard prior to that), here.

Getting back your eyesight, naturally

Sooo, after too much reading and mostly, spending too much time behind the screens (thesis work, then private stuff/surfing), I seriously noticed my eyes deteriorating. And as I was lucky enough to come across people (M.J.) that use techniques to improve eyesight, I contacted them, got some info and then looked it up on the net.

Below is the result of my search, a compilation of links and videos I suggest to anyone, including me.

[Note, if you doubt a lot of these things, just skip to links 11 and 12. And then possibly return to using the rest.]

What resounds most deeply with me is the thought that eye muscles can be trained. Sure, lenses can be tricky. But if you could see well before ... and your eyesight deteriorates, maybe it's time to ask yourself why. Why why why. For me, I look at screens or books for 8-14 hours per day. And I think I may not be the only person in this world (10).

Another thing that resounds with me is the next two:

"The professionals - Optometrists and Ophthalmologists base their profession on theories that are more than 150 years old. The official line is that your eyes will get worse as you grow older, and there is nothing you can do about this except wear corrective lenses. They need to be strengthened every so often as your eyesight deteriorates. Not a very promising picture except for one thing - it’s not actually true." (9)

And: 'The glasses do absolutely nothing about the under laying reasons you can’t see. Most people have the experience that their prescription slowly gets higher and higher. Some people actually avoid visiting the eye doctor for as long as possible so they don’t get stronger glasses.’' (7)

Remember, though: you need to invest time in it. If you spent 4 or 8 or 20 years of your life, looking at books and PC screens most of your waking hours (10), thereby deteriorating your eyesight, then maybe you should consider investing some minutes per day into restoring it.


Meir Schneider - Yoga for Your Eyes (1).
This guy used to be almost completely blind and he didn't accept it. So he took up a method, the Bates Method of eye exercises at age 17 and practiced it for up to 13 hours per day (2).

There's another book (8) and a mix of techniques, taught by Leo Angart, who, after wearing glasses for 26 years, got rid of them. And that was in 1992/3.

(1): Mier Schneider: Yoga for the Eyes
(2): Mier Schneider's page

(3): Interview with world renowned vision trainer Leo Angart

(4): BBC4 short interview with Leo Angart, two students and an ophthalmologist:
> practice 10 times a day, for a few minutes, for 5-6 months

(5): Google search for Mier Schneider

(6): Google: natural vision training

(7) From a FB post: link to source

(8): Angart, Leo (2008). Improve Your Eyesight Naturally: Easy, Effective, See Results Quickly. Saffire Press. pp. 89–90. ISBN 978-3-937553-08-5.
(9): Regaining your eyesight naturally - is it possible?

(10): Study: Minority Kids Spend Most Waking Hours Plugged In To Media | June 8, 2011: http://commonhealth.wbur.org/2011/06/study-minority-kids-spend-most-waking-hours-plugged-in

(11): Computer Eye Strain:  10 Steps for Relief: http://www.allaboutvision.com/cvs/irritated.htm

(12) If you're more of a "don't believe this esoteric crap" kind of person, here's Paul McCartney to teach/tell you about Yoga for Our Eyes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=00XqvNwYMoc

(13): Hint about the Bates Method: Don't start staring at the sun. And at least until somebody else then you says you can, maybe it's good to drive with your glasses :)

If Men Had To Do It, It Wouldn't Be Done

Disgusting. And people actually have the guts to ask me why I am so passionate about #gender portrayal in #media? What I'm talking about is this video.

Got that video from a blog post titled "if men had to do it…it wouldn’t be being done".

On the bright side, there was this video, made by College Humor (US), which points to rather skewed ratio of boobs (and female nudity in general) VS sausages (err.. male nudity). Titled: Think Seeing A Little Male Nudity On TV Is Too Explicit? Then ... It's Time To Hear The Hard Truth.

Which is quite related to: If Men posed like motorcycle babes:: quite funny, see it here.

See also Representation Project, which is all about promoting gender equality in the media, as creating a public response when a particularly "juicy" content is brought to their attention.

BTW, if you use Twitter, use hastag #NotBuyingIt and tweet about such things. ESPECIALLY when there are big sports events up and about, like SuperBowl (see: here).

Thicke's "Blurred Lines" and Miley Cirus and rape and whatnot

I've seen Thicke's original explicit video so long ago that I can hardly remember ... being put off by it and thinking - jeez, this is demeaning to women. And yet, as Thicke looks nice and shakes his booty in the rhythm of the song (which is, admittedly, quite catchy), they seem to forget all about it. Well, not me. And I'm a guy.

'Thicke's song, "Blurred Lines," doesn't endorse rape, as some have alleged, it does present the most tediously reductive view of sex and women with the idea of "a good girl" just needing to be liberated by alcohol and a penis to become "an animal". It's an idea that was satirised six years ago in Superbad by teenagers and yet remains as credible in pop songs today as it does in porn. It's one of life's ironies that pop music is supposedly a progressive and young person's art form, yet the messages it sends are generally as retrograde as the gruntings of an embarrassing middle-aged uncle at Christmas dinner." —Hadley Freeman, The Guardian'

From: Critics Roundup: What Everyone Said About Miley Cyrus’s VMA Performance | Vulture.com

"But you're an animal, baby, it's in your nature Just let me liberate ya!", "And that's why I'm gon' take a good girl .... I know you want it", "You the hottest bitch in this place", "But you're a good girl
The way you grab me
Must wanna get nasty
Go ahead, get at me"

Well, fine. But I follow some of the online life and news and I for one (and apparently, not for one, as it seems to resound in the comments of 'critics' linked to above) think it does create a problem - talking of one sex as Things. .. Sigh. You'll see, they'll be plenty more talk of Rape Culture in the future. Part of the future, precipitated by "meh, it's pop" attitude of today. Unfortunately. Well, we'll see. Maybe I'm just growing old and conservative (I let this be an option).

That being said, it's always good to see some humour reverberating through the digital tides and thus, a link to the Robin Thicke Blurred Lines Parody - #HungryGirl. You should check out some other titles in the flood of "Thicke Blurred Lines parody videos", like "Tan Lines".
  Resorting to humour is as always, a human response. (I believe, a much more productive one than resorting to violence, for example. Lenon agrees.) But will it be enough to save your little [baby] sister (2012, 2013), your teenage daughter, your wife on vacation? Some "reporters" just ride on the media waves ... and masses read/watch and otherwise consume it (example - "twerking" and Miley Cirus ... 'scientifically' explained).

On one hand, it is also true that nowadays, with media, the news spreads around waaaay faster. So, I guess these things happened in the past, maybe even at the same rate as they do today, only when in the past they were frowned upon or locally "contained", nowadays, they spread like virus over the net. Time will tell. Or not.