The newest casualties of the war on terrorism are, oddly enough, courtesy of the U.S. Department of Education. In a recent decision, an education panel cut public funding for over 200 television programs to be closed-captioned by the Department's Technology and Media Services for Individuals with Disabilities program.
Nancy Bloch, Executive Director of the National Association for the Deaf, said of the decision, "This secretive process amounts to censorship, which runs counter to the principles of the First Amendment freedom of speech."
And in true Bush administration fashion, pleas to name those on the five-member panel that made the captioning decision have fallen on seemingly deaf ears. So secretive was their work, in fact, that they didn't even know they were on the panel. When NAD finally tracked one of them down, he told them he never knew he was on such a panel, or that his views would be used in the name of censorship.
If that isn't bad enough, it turns out that no panel was ever actually convened. The five panelists were contacted individually, and their opinions were solicited separately.
All in the name of national security, I suppose.
Even more puzzling than this move towards censorship are the shows that have been censored. Deaf NASCAR fans will have to do without captions, leaving them with, well, 5 hours of men driving in circles. While oddly similar to the broadcasts that hearing fans will receive, they'll miss out on the ever-present engine revving and Southern accents that inexplicably draw millions of people to the sport.
Baseball telecasts on ABC suffered the same fate, and the deaf are left with 5 hours of men running in circles and no explanations when elderly bench coaches come stumbling out of the dugout to shellac young pitchers.
Another victim of the axe is the VH1 "Behind the Music" series. But if it's any consolation, deaf America, you're not missing much. Most of these bands sucked the first time around, anyway.
Deaf children have suddenly found themselves deprived of "Scooby-Doo," "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," and the "Powerpuff Girls." Hearing-impaired film buffs have suddenly been excluded from enjoying ANYTHING on the Independent Film Channel. I don't know about you guys, but Scoob never implored me to burn a flag when I was a kid, and nothing on IFC ever incensed me enough to join the Taliban.
Better safe than sorry.
There are some 28 million deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals in this country. I am one of them. Denying one in 10 Americans the right to basic television programming smacks of federally-mandated discrimination, but even worse, the government is taking extraordinary steps to ensure that the public is kept in the dark about the new captioning rules. Essentially, while the government may have changed its definition of what makes programming worthy of captioning, it's keeping the new rules shrouded in secrecy.
Dan Moffett from the Palm Beach Post says that "missing 'Bewitched' and 'Law & Order' is just one sacrifice the deaf will have to make to advance homeland security and fight terrorism." Luckily for the deaf world, ABC's specials on the Iraq War made the cut. So did A&E's "American Justice" series and every single show on Fox News. So did the perennial Bush favorite, "21st Century Astrology." My sources inside the White House have told me that W and George Tenet used to sit around until late in the night enjoying that one.
That would make it easier to explain the whole Iraq mess anyway. If we never find any weapons of mass destruction, George and George can always say that war was written in the stars.
Brian Clapp thinks you should vote yes on the MU/SRC referendum this week. Reach him at leisurestudies@asu.edu.
