The Right of The Blind to Read Trash

To All Lovers of Trashy Novels.

It's all wrapped together in that ancient stereotype that "The Blind" are totally dependent and need protection by "Superior Sighted" benefactors. 

When I returned to college in the middle 60's as a blind man, reading material that was determined to be "Earthy" in nature was not being recorded for the general blind public. 

I remember a friend sneaking a tape to me to listen to.  It was a very descriptive novel of the Harlequin Romance variety with a bit of the French Post Card tossed in.  The reader actually drooled as he read the book.  It was sort of like buying bootleg booze.  Rough, course, but satisfying. 

So to put things in perspective, enter the Viet Nam War.  Even as congress was voting billions to "Protect" Americans from Communism, by bombing villages and forests in Viet Nam, Cambodia and Laos, that same congress felt moved to "Protect" the blind by refusing to fund the publication of Play Boy magazine in Braille. 

I must tell you that the blind community was much quicker in turning congress around than were the anti war protesters.  We blitzed congress.  The poor Saviors of the Blind must have been left with their halos spinning after we gave them what for. 

So today we blind folk are free to have recorded and to read all the same trash as are our sighted brethren. 

In the History of the Blind, the Play Boy incident will be but a footnote.  But there is a lesson that should not be passed over lightly. 

If the squeaky wheel gets the oil, as the old adage teaches, then the United Blind shouting and jumping up and down can get the attention of congress. 

Maybe it's time we did a bit more uniting, shouting and jumping around. 

 

Curious Carl