Reply #21: He was being funny. The "little jerk" comment was obviously intended in

[tblue37]

good humor.

I am a college English teacher. I can't tell you how much less fun the classroom has become since we can no longer banter playfully with our students for fear someone will take offense at an inoffensive comment obviously meant jokingly. I am not talking about patently offensive comments, either. I don't find McCain's comment offensive at all, but it is obvious that some humorless people would, so I would never say something like that. But even the mildest humor offends someone, and so it becomes harder and harder to lighten the tone of a classroom by being playful and energetic when teaching.

For example, I am profoundly hearing-impaired. I wear hearing aids, but they don't provide the sort of wonderful correction that most people get with glasses. In order to help my students understand the limitations on my hearing, even with hearing aids, I tell them that my hearing aids help me hear about as well as their great-grandmother's walker helps her jog.

Believe it or not, one student a few semesters ago actually complained that I was mocking the handicapped, and that she didn't appreciate my joking at the expense of people who use walkers.

BTW, I use a cane and park in handicapped spots myself, so along with the deafness, I think that I am actually part of the demographic that she was leaping to protect from old meanies like me.

On my I'm Listening as Hard as I Can! website (http://www.deafnotdumb.homestead.com/index.html), where I post mostly humorous articles about coping with deafness in a society where deaf people are treated as nuisances--and as idiots--I have an article entitled "Deaf People Are So Annoying!" (http://www.deafnotdumb.homestead.com/deafannoy.html). It is about the attitudes that most "hearies" have towards those of us who don't have normal hearing. One teenager left this furious comment in the guest book of that article:

YOU MIGHT THINK DEAF PEOPLE ARE ANNOYING BUT I HAVE A DEAF BROTHER AND I HAVE LIVED WITH HIM ALL MY LIFE I AM 14 AND NOT ONCE I HAVE FOUND HES ANNOYING SO GO MAKE FUN OF OTHER PEOPLE OR AT LEAST GROW UP AND FIND SUMTHIN BETTER TO DO THAT PICK ON PEOPLE SO FUCK U

Obviously she didn't read past the title, since my first paragraph explains that I am deaf, and that two of my sisters are deaf, and our mother and grandmother--and most of Grandma's sisters plus one of her brothers--were also deaf. But quite apart from the issue of "Is our children learning? (She obviously was no reader!) it seems evident that she came in with a chip on her shoulder, ready, nay eager, to be offended on behalf of her deaf brother.

Similarly, I think anyone who finds McCain's obviously humorus, good-natured comment insulting and offensive is a humorless stick.

And I can't stand McCain.