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underwhere
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Posts posted by underwhere
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You are also missing my point, babykeiff. There are a whole host of things I can do to help facilitate social life for me. I make use of many of those strategies even though requesting assistance must be repeated over and over and over again even if I ask for exactly the same thing. In high school, I would ask people to reintroduce themselves to me by name, and there were still some assholes who would intentionally give me the wrong name because they thought it was funny. I'm done with grade school. I'm done with high school. I thought that I lived in a world of thinking feeling adults. However, being mocked on national television by people who clearly can not think or feel is not going to help me or anybody else who deals with prosopagnosia, or for that matter any other disability.
Let's talk about mocking:
It is akin to asking why a blind person should not be able to take attendance visually. This would never be mocked on television.
It is akin to expecting a deaf person to read lips while turning your face away from their visual field. This would never be mocked on television. (to say nothing of the fact that even the best of lip readers still are uncertain of a vast portion of the conversation in any detail)
It is akin to telling a person who spends their life in a wheel chair (for whatever reason) that they should chuck the wheelchair in the garbage can and "get off their ass and walk on both feet."
It is akin to telling a person with aphasia that they should speak more coherently.
Am I the only person who finds all of these examples grossly offensive? Am I the only person who might stand up and shout "NO!" if I saw one of these happening? Am I the only person who would hope that people would stand up for me if they saw me being bullied? Am I the only person who would stand up to a bully if I saw somebody else being bullied?
Perhaps humanity is more terrible than I thought.
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Here is an example of a tactful humorous way to handle this kind of situation. It is written by a person who has prosopagnosia, but even if it was not, the writing style and tone are very easy and not antagonistic or completely ignorant:
Note the difference in tone expressed here. If Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda had gotten their message across in a similar less snarky way, I would not be complaining about it. It is possible, and should be expected, that people will deal with issues like this in a sensitive way. The fact that some people don't handle situations like this sensitively may make them assholes. However, for the people they are talking about who happen to have a condition which is already not-well-understood and for which it is clear that those people presenting the topic have no desire to try to understand, in my opinion, that is simply unacceptable.
I ran across a song a while ago, and I don't even remember how this happened. Type this into youtube: old mcdonald had a deformed farm
Some of the humor is clever, but some of it is downright obnoxious. I think we would do much better, on the whole, with clever humor. We don't need the obnoxious humor.
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actually i was just thinking how long you have been a member here and in all that time you continue to let your medical conditions define who you are... or at least that is very often how you present yourself on here.
I think you actually missed my broader point here, Sara_ab. I try not to let it define me. I've worked pretty hard to not let it define me, but since every rational person expects to be recognized by face unless they are informed that it might be impossible for a certain subset of people to do that, the social consequences of failing to recognize faces can be very severe, and also of note, those consequences are completely out of my ability to control, or frankly even influence. I am, quite literally, at the whim of what I hope will be understanding people.
Yes, having prosopagnosia sucks and makes life impossibly difficult at times. It is startling every time somebody says hello to me, and I must rack my brain to figure out, first of all, if it is safe to let the person know I have no idea who they are, and second, who the heck are they anyway? I fear, only minimally rationally I admit, that I could be the victim of a crime or somehow need to identify somebody for a specific reason, and of course I will be unable to do that.
My point was that in this particular case, I don't have to let my medical conditions define who I am. Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda did a fine job of doing that for me, and I had absolutely nothing to do with that. Their antics and their entire approach to this topic were completely insensitive. That is why I am outraged over this situation.
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Poker-faced
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and all of the world shall sigh with, and bow down to, sarah_ab.
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wow welcome to the world of having tourette syndrome where it is the punchline of countless jokes and is made fun of in so many movies.. and you know what... those jokes, and those movies are fucking hilarious!
There is a difference between jokes in good taste and jokes in poor taste. There is a difference between jokes told by one group of people about that group of people (and yes, those of us with prosopagnosia have a ready made collection of those at our disposal) than about jokes told by one group of people ABOUT another group of people. I am a white guy. If I EVER jokingly said the word "nigger", people would have every right to "whoop my ass," and I hope they would. Similarly, as a Jew, I get some leeway in humor regarding being Jewish and the difficult situations that Jews have historically faced, but seriously, I would not think too kindly of similar jokes being told by somebody who is not Jewish. The context for understanding of the dark humor simply isn't there. In any event, some jokes, no matter what context, aren't funny anyway. I've heard some really bad ones about Jews, for example, and some really bad ones about blacks, and some really bad ones about a whole bunch of other groups, none of which are worth repeating because they are so vulgar. When I saw this clip, I, and most other people with prosopagnosia who have seen this already, became the butt of a vulgar joke.
Personally, I do not appreciate jokes about any particular disability which are casually thrown about, nor jokes about specific religions, races, or whatever. I also would not object to a well-crafted joke about prosopagnosia if the context of that joke was something I could relate to. Some jokes about some life circumstances are funny. This particular one was clearly intended to be hurtful from the get-go.
Bettypooh, I have no problem asking for help, but I can hardly be expected to ask for help from people who are intent on hurting me. I got enough of that in high school and grade school for 10 lifetimes. I also make do with the coping strategies I do have, and probably could be given an Academy award for best actor accordingly. I'm trying not to let what I can't do get in the way of my life, but when other people insist upon putting up road blocks, it sure would be nice to charge them for the repair to my "tires" when I run over them.
SpokaneGirl, your observations are correct, but again, the context of poking fun makes all the difference. I don't care if people laugh WITH me and my circumstances, but when they start laughing AT me, I have a problem with that. That should not be tolerated no matter what age you are or who you happen to be. Language is also a very powerful tool, and what people say matters a lot, at least as much as how they say it. I think the political correctness police have gone a little too far, but this is not about being politically correct. This is about common decency and treating others as you would wish to be treated. Personally, what irks me most about this is that there was a teachable moment handed to them on a silver platter, and instead, they chose to make a collection of cheap jokes about it in front of an audience of millions of people on national television, many of whom will now have a preconceived notion of prosopagnosia, something most of them have never heard of before, which is completely inaccurate. I've personally spent nearly 18 years cultivating a better understanding of prosopagnosia to the world at large. I don't deserve either to have my efforts mocked or my disability mocked.
Codymoogle, I agree with you 100%.
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mortal
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Devil
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I know that many people here have disabilities. One thing I hate more than almost anything else is when somebody makes fun of a disability. The only thing I hate more is when somebody makes fun of MY disability.
Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda managed to do that this past week, and Brad Pitt was in their cross hairs. Brad Pitt recently told Esquire Magazine that he believes he has prosopagnosia. In other words, he believes he is unable to recognize people he has seen before using the face as the primary recognition mechanism. Kathy Lee Gifford and Hoda, in their usual way from what I have been told, made the childish decision to make fun of the word and the condition of prosopagnosia.
I don't know how many of you know that I blog on the web site of Psychology Today discussing some of my life experiences as a result of having prosopagnosia. I just published my most recent blog entry about this particular incident, and I really hope people will read it and share it. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/face/201305/prosopagnosia-is-no-laughing-matter
I'm hoping this goes viral, actually, but a little help won't hurt. My next step is to bring this to the attention of NBC, the network which hosts their show. I don't know exactly what I hope will happen, but I do have some ideas for that too. I'll try to keep you all up to date as this campaign of mine progresses.
Thanks in advance, and feel free to comment either here or by messaging me if you have any thoughts or ideas about any of this.
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freswith, what do you think Quoth would do with a gangster?
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Nevermore!
I win.
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The earth is round. Therefore, if I travel west far enough, eventually I will wind up relatively east of where I began. I hear that Quoth is a very patient raven. Surely, Quoth will wait for me.
In any event, while freswith contemplates the trophy, I take the trophy and win.
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"YOUR trophy?"
I snatch the trophy away from you, and then place the trophy into a blimp. Just for fun, I cause the blimp to go up in the air unmanned, and do not direct it to settle at any particular altitude. Eventually, of course, the air pressure will cause the entire blimp to burst, and when it does, the trophy will fall at the acceleration of gravity (9.8 meters per square second) and bop astrodiaper on the nose on the way down.
While astrodiaper is taken to the hospital to be checked out, I grab the trophy back and gallop west in search of Quoth.
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Said the masochist to the sadist, "Beat me!"
Said the sadist in reply, "No."
I'd tell you a joke about the guy with amnesia, but I forget how it goes.
http://www.lawlaughs.com/mature/squareballs.html
What do you call a sick bird which breaks the law?
Ill Eagle
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Theist
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Quoth is interested in BDSM? I suppose that he had ulterior motives for having a discussion with freswith, a mere pitiful frog in the eyes of a raven, about E A Poe. freswith isn't such a quick whit after all.
Nonetheless, knowing that I will have to appear before Judge freswith, Crooked Judge of Last Post Wins, as I have once before, I resign myself with the knowledge that I will win before I am taken to the hanging gallows, and everybody knows that if you die with the win, the win dies with you. Therefore, posthumously, I will forever be the winner of Last Post Wins. Of course, if somebody wishes to come along and save me from the gallows, Heaven forbid, then this game of Last Post Wins can continue without incident. My life, and this game, are in all of your collective hands.
While I wait for the ultimate decision to occur, I content myself with the knowledge that, at least for now, I win.
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Wait a minute! How do you know about that top secret fund? Only a very few people are supposed to know about that fund, and you most certainly were not on that list, astrodiaper!
Uhh, hmmmm, and anyway, that fund had been...uh.....previously raided by....oh, never mind! I win! (Don't tell freswith!)
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The only person to use the word "nevermore", a very close derivation of "evermore", was Edgar Allen Poe, and as you surely know, he was talking about The Raven and made no mention of The Frog. Since you clearly neglected this piece of knowledge, I am instructing the banks to foreclose on your mantlepiece, never mind that no loan was ever taken out on it or that it was never offered as collateral for a loan. After they take your mantlepiece back, I tell them of an agreement made long ago between freswith and underwhere in which the trophy was to be given to underwhere for safekeeping in the event that the mantlepiece was taken back. I produce a document with signatures from both underwhere and freswith and tell the bank to verify the authenticity of the signatures if they so chose. They do, and as a result of that verification, both the trophy and the win are returned to underwhere evermore.
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Subtly wrong? Seriously, freswith, I got it exactly right. I travel from all three directions simultaneously, and can attack frogs three times as quickly, take the trophy back, and then put myself back together. Then I raise the trophy high, shout out, "HALLELUJAH!" and run off before the vultures grab what is left of a stunned frog.
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Astrodiaper, your teleporter on your space station comes in very handy. All I have to do is use it to show up, take the win, and return back to earth. The view was fantastic.
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It is well known that there was quite a relationship between a specific frog and a certain princess of wheels. I wonder whatever happened to that princess, and why she never bothered to kiss this frog.
Well, I suppose I could wax nostalgia forever, but I'd rather be winning.
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You are most welcome, Diaper Pro. It was a lovely service. However, I see you must be a vampire, and since I did not bite you on the neck, you are still alive. That is okay. All I ever wanted was to be the winner, and that I am.
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Pity that on the other side of the finish line is a cliff of 4,000 meters. By the time CDLover hits the ground, there is already a casket and hearse waiting for him. As funeral director, I give CDLover his last rites, and then saunter off with the win.
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What a brilliant idea!
When People Think Disabilities Become Laughable, It Is Time To Act.
in The Rest of your Life!
Posted
Some people think that saying "Heil Hitler" is funny. There are some things which we, as a society, simply should not stand for. We all know what happened in Nazi Germany. We also know that people refused to stand up for what was right at that time which anybody in there right mind would have known that Hitler's vision for the future and his method for carrying it out was not right. They all gave reasons for doing what they did. At the end of the day, sad as it is, some of those had to be excusable as some people realized that if they didn't go along, they themselves would have been killed. That does not excuse Hitler's actions. It is, however, an acknowledgment that when we face life and death situations, our choices are much more limiting.
We don't live in a time of Hitler today, thank the Lord for that. However, we do live in a time where people can come together much faster than they ever could to take on a cause which they feel is abhorrent.
babykeiff, one way to become stronger, as those in Nazi Germany were too afraid to do publicly, is to stand together and point out any injustices which we witness, and then take action accordingly.
What have I done? Through my network of friends and relatives, I was given the name of a contact person down at The Today Show. I also CC'd one of the network executives with that letter. I have also come here and elsewhere to request additional support from others who are willing to take a stand against this type of behavior. Clearly, I came to the wrong place.
Skokie ( http://www.aclu.org/free-speech/aclu-history-taking-stand-free-speech-skokie ) was one of the most prominent Freedom of Speech cases in the USA. The outcome of that case boiled down to two points.
* We do not have to agree with the message or expression of a message for it to be legal and protected speech. (The US government has come up with a variety of counter-examples, so this argument is shaky at best.)
* We should use that same freedom of speech to speak out against messages we find to be problematic.
That is why I am here seeking allies from people who don't seem to give enough of a shit to actually do something. Raising awareness about an issue is the first step in taking action. I posted letters in the mail already. I wrote a blog entry about it. Several other people have also spoken out publicly against this specific television "episode" and have already taken some actions of their own. That is raising awareness. That is making me, and my overall point, stronger, if only people weren't so intent on telling me that I am a whiner. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, but a few more squeaky wheels would sure help. Clearly, I came to the wrong place to find squeaky wheels.