This particular critique is unusual coming from this direction. Yes, Donald Trump has ignored many groups in society and that’s an egregious thing. And the fact that this time he’s excluding a group of handicapped Americans is particularly wrong. But for Joe Rogan to take up the cause of the deaf and point out the unfairness of Trump having press conferences without a signer to translate is somewhat unusual. It is, if nothing else, a kind of red flag going up that factions previously solidly in Trump’s camp may be in the process of not being quite so laudatory as they were in the past. Daily Beast:
Rogan was chatting with Oscar-winner Billy Bob Thornton on Thursday episode’s of The Joe Rogan Experience when he called out a “crazy” change that the president he endorsed has made to the daily press briefings.
“I think there’s a lawsuit right now to make the Trump administration bring sign language people back to those White House press briefings,” Rogan said. After his producer looked it up, Rogan questioned if there was any other time that sign language interpreters weren’t included in the briefings.
“No, it says they stopped during the Trump administration,” Rogan was told, to which he responded, “Oh, that’s crazy… why would they take that out? Why would you remove sign language?”
He went on, “That’s one thing that’s happened over the last couple decades, is they actually do, when there’s important information, they always have a signer there.”
The White House has indeed been embroiled in a legal battle with the National Association of the Deaf, which sued the administration for the omission. The Trump administration fired ASL interpreters in January.
The Association argued that the decision violates the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, resulting in discrimination by an “executive agency.”
On Tuesday of this week, a judge ordered through temporary injunction that the administration immediately begin including interpreters in its briefings. Trump’s not wanting to “share a platform,” as the judge put it, was not reason enough to halt the previously established common practice under Joe Biden.
“Given the nature of the programming at issue here—regularly scheduled briefings on critical topics implicating markets, medicine, militaries, and myriads of other issues—the court finds that denying deaf Americans access to and the benefit of it presents a clear, present, and imminent harm,” the judge declared in the ruling.
Rogan expressed his support for that position, though he admitted he hadn’t noticed the interpreters much before. “I never saw it like at speeches or anything like that, but yeah, it’s important,” he said.
The interpreters are there on all important occasions. Whether they’re in the actual room or not I could not say. But we have seen situations where at a presidential debate, for instance, an interpreter will be wedged into a corner of the screen so that the needs of the deaf community can be served. Maybe that is done by the ASL or the networks or both.
Trump undoubtedly has no idea about this because he’s oblivious to such small details. Unless you prove to him that the deaf are rich or MAGAs or in some manner lining his pockets, he’s indifferent to whether they get to know what he is saying in real time or not. And in point of fact, they may be better off not knowing what he’s saying. But that should be an individual choice, not something that is enforced upon people because their needs as a community are simply not served to begin with.
The real problem is that no-one can interpret the gibberish he spouts. His word salads are completely un-translateable into normal coherent language.
We don’t have sign language interpreters for the same reason we don’t have English language interpreters.
It’s not possible.
For starters, I don’t understand what you mean by “[w]e don’t have sign language interpreters” when the reason was noted in the article: They were FIRED by the Drumpf Administration back at the start. (Exact quote: “The Trump administration fired ASL interpreters in January.”)
Secondly, those trained in ASL signing are simply conveying what is verbally presented to an audience without the ability to hear the words in a manner that provides that information. They are effectively “translating” to those who need it. (ASL actually has its own grammar and syntax which aren’t exactly the same as English.) They do much as someone translating a Drumpf speech to a largely Spanish-speaking audience would do and listen to the sentences and decide the best way to translate the phrase (e.g., in Spanish, you wouldn’t translate “I like you” with the same verb as “I like ice cream”). Whatever they can easily translate, they will and whatever they can’t easily translate, they can simply put it out there as it is and let the audience try to figure out what to make of it (much as we English speakers tend to have to do with anything that Drumpf says–I mean, if those of us who have no hearing impairment don’t understand what Drumpf meant by “covfefe,” I don’t think the deaf should have any advantage in having the “word” explained*). I mean, there are foreign-derived words we’re forced to use in English because we don’t have an “exact” translation or the concept–even if translated–doesn’t really carry over (like “zeitgeist” or “doppelganger”; the words in German carry a meaning that has a subtle difference from they’re commonly used in English).
*Though I imagine an ASL interpreter spelled out “c-o-v-f-e-f-e” and then made some sort of “What the fork did I just finger-spell” sign.
And he keeps inventing new words, like “groceries”.
One thing that pops up continually among racists and xenophobes is the rear of people who “don’t speak English” – or the language of whatever country the xenophobes live in. I think it’s been determined that these phobics assume that if pelple are talking in a language they don’t understand, those people must be talking about them, and what they are saying cannot be pleasant. Why would the Nectarine Narcissist NOT feel that way about ASL?This shoul have been predictable, had anyone thought about it.