Blind spot

From a New York Post editorial today: "[David] Paterson's blindness severely constricts his ability to acquire basic information." That prompted Politico's Ben Smith to ask: "Is [the press] permitted to question, respectfully, whether blindness and inability to read are making it hard for him to govern?"

Comments

Do they know he's black, too? I'm sure they could come up with something about that.

I dated someone for two years who never learned Braille because he has a degenerative eye disease. He could see enough when he was young to read with the aid of a machine that enlarged the letters.

His eyesight is gone now, but he "reads" at a much faster pace than I do by using screen-reading software called JAWS. He also reads a few books on tape a week, again at high speed. And he knows how to listen, which is a pretty crucial job skill when you run a high school counseling office.

There's more than one way to define literacy. I wish more people could see that.

Every person on this planet has some kind of limitation. There is a lot of hoopla about Patterson's sight limitations because they are so obvious and public. I'd argue, though, that invisible limitations can interfere with one's ability to do their job much more than blindness does for David Patterson. If you don't believe me, ask Elliot Spitzer.

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