YORE GOVERNMENT AT WURK
NOVEMBER 2, 2011. Breaking…New federal regs make it mandatory for religious broadcasters to put captions for the deaf under their TV church extravaganzas—unless they can demonstrate paying for running text would bring them economic hardship.
This is very good. I think all those Sunday TV preachers need captions, because their messages are vital to the nation.
But what about the blind? I believe they should be supplied with handheld devices that display messages in Braille: “Preacher is sweating profusely.” “Preacher touched woman, she fell over backwards and her bald head immediately sprouted new hair.” “Preacher leered at good-looking blond in first row.”
As far as I know, current federal law mandates that all video made for TV must display captions for the deaf. What about pay-TV porn in hotel rooms? Borderline. An interesting court case.
“Well, Your Honor, as you can plainly see, when the protagonist and the heroine are on the bed in the motel room, their exclamations (“Oh baby, oh baby, oh baby!”) are NOT showing up as captions on the screen. Clearly, this is case of discrimination against the hearing-impaired. If you and I can, uh, pleasure ourselves while we’re watching The Knight and the Maiden, deaf hotel patrons should be able to enjoy the same fundamental right.”
Appeals right up to the US Supreme Court.
Then we have this. Why should deaf people be barred from working as late-shift security guards in corporate buildings? You know, the people sitting at the front desk who watch video screens covering offices, staircases, elevators? Yes, they can see a thief walking down a hallway on the 12th floor, but they can’t hear what he’s saying to his partner. Therefore, we must have captions on all those screens, too. (“Hey, man, I told you this was wrong fucking floor!”)
And if that’s the case, then, by extension, some blogger who puts up a You Tube video of a woman urging her cat to eat a plastic fish should immortalize her words with captions.
And if you’re standing in your back yard at your kid’s birthday party, and you’re doing running commentary on all the little darlings careening down the slide into the pool, you need a stenographer sitting nearby typing in text. You never know who’s going to watch that video some day.
I just thought of another thing. In supermarkets, you’ll sometimes hear, over the speakers, announcements about specials. Well, where are the big screens that display captions? I think we have a suit here. Any attorneys out there ready to take those bastards to court?
Now, this next one is a bit tricky. There are people, who for whatever reasons, have lost their sense of taste. Taste is a sense like sight or hearing. Are we going to favor the deaf and the blind over those who can’t differentiate between a potato and a leek? I say all food markets must include, on shelves, descriptions of how the products taste. I realize this won’t be easy. So we need to bring in poets, people who are used to inventing metaphors. We have to try.
And what about old hippies who did too much high-dose acid and have “crossover senses?” They hear sunsets and see music. What are we going to do for them? The FCC should get cracking on this.
I know you’ve been waiting to point out the central flaw in my essay, so I’ll beat you to it. Yes, I’m WRITING this piece, and I fully realize that, in doing so, I’m immediately setting up an arbitrary preference for readers. Not only am I discriminating against the blind, I’m bypassing all those millions who are illiterate.
Therefore, I’m fully prepared to offer audio of every article I produce. Furthermore, I’ll hire assistants who explain, in far simpler terms, what I’m writing and posting every day, for the illiterates.
It’s a start. It shows good faith.
I like to stay out in front of these trends.
Pioneering the new frontiers of equality can be a hassle, but isn’t that what we’re here for? Hassle?
As I go to press, I’ve discovered several staggering facts. There are 6800 languages in the world. No one knows how many are written. But let’s say half. 3400. Now—why in this multicultural society of ours should we practice gross discrimination with our captions? We need captions in ALL languages ALL the time. Can you begin to see where I’m going with this? Let me add something else here that should make it clearer. In many sub-sets of communities across our great land, we’re seeing the development of a disorder called CAS. Caption Addiction Syndrome. That’s right! For example, Korean women who work in nail parlors are watching TV with the sound off, and they’re reading captions all day long. And they’re getting hooked! When they talk to friends after work, they EXPECT TO SEE CAPTIONS FLOATING IN MID-AIR!
So…treatment centers! You bet! Thousands of them, to treat and cure this affliction.
And together with the need for captions in 3400 languages to accompany each and every video made for TV (and eventually online), we have the beginning of a real…JOBS PROGRAM for America.
Finally.
Send this piece to the White House, because Obama’s polling numbers are in the eighth circle of Hell right now, and they’re trending lower. He needs some good news. I’m more than happy to help, and I’m sure all those altruistic celebs who want to pay more taxes would like to see bangs for their bucks, in terms of employment figures.
The Grand Coulee Dam? The Tennessee Valley Authority? Yes, they produced jobs for Americans during the Great Depression. But they were conceived in an era when industrial might was our only option. Now, in the Information Age, we have data—and data need explanatory data to reach greater numbers of people. Hence: CAPTION ACTION. An unlikely messiah, but we take our manna where we find it.
CAPTION: IN THIS ARTICLE, RAPPOPORT STATES WE NEED CAPTIONS EVERYWHERE…AND THIS WILL CREATE MORE WORK AND END THE RECESSION.
Jon Rappoport