The Green Bay Press-Gazette newspaper of Green Bay, Wisconsin recently published the editoral cartoon by Joe Keller on the issue of deaf sex abuse scandal. Some questions arised how ignorant and inaccurate data the hearing cartoonist employed on his 'Deaf Sex Abuse Scandal" cartoon - http://blog.cagle.com/tag/abuse/
The given message was "None are so deaf as those who refuse to hear". The inaccurate data was 'Milwaukee School for the Deaf". Everyone knew that was the St. John School for the Deaf.
Worst of all, Joe Keller raised in Milkwaukee, WI and the "Dairy State" all his life. How can be possible for Joe Keller not to be familar with the respectable approach toward deaf people and the accurate info regarding the name of school got embroiled within the deaf sex abuse scandal? http://www.hellertoon.com/bio.html
Keller cartoons were distributed to more than 350 newspapers and several magazines from "Time" to the "U.S. News and World Report". He also done several children books.
We need to watch out for deaf and hearing cartoonists' artworks feature deaf people in the offensive modes to make sure that there will be no misinformation about us.
ASlize yours,
Robert L. Mason (RLM)
RLMDEAF blog
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Hi, Robert,
ReplyDeleteNote that the cartoonist put a hyphen (-) between Milwaukee and the school for the deaf. He did not put down Milwaukee School for the Deaf...actually he put down Milwaukee - school for the deaf. He was probably in a rush when he created the cartoon and forgot the name of the school for the deaf. Or he conveniently omitted the name out of respect for the students & alumnae and instead put emphasis on the location, as I did on one instance in my blog about my oral school. (I know how cartoonists think - heh heh.) I doubt he was being ignorant nor disrespectful towards the deaf - in fact, his cartoon was implying that the Pope and the guilty priests are MORE deaf than us who are physically deaf. That is what I think he means. Thank you though for posting the link to the cartoons.
Dan
Dan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the clarification on the use of hypen (-) which I overlooked it in the first place.
I apologize for jumping to the conclusion on the name of school and the meaning of msg itself.
We ought to do the random survey of hearing people what they interpret the message from Keller's cartoon image and message itself.
Thanks for leaving your comment. :)
RLM