Have a weird, impossible problem that only someone with a thimble of common sense could solve? Ask Dr. Know-It-All!

EARTH VERSUS MARS, INABILITY TO ADMIT A DISABILITY, BILL CLINTON’S STUNNING ANNOUNCEMENT, TED HAGGARD’S STUNNING ANNOUNCEMENT, BUDGETARY TRIALS AND TRIBULATIONS

DEAR DR. KNOW-IT-ALL: Should I move to Mars? I heard that our own planet is doomed — global warming is going to dunk several continents under a mile of water soon — and that this will cause quite a big dent in the economy. I’ve seen a Green Peace press release confirming this. First one polar ice cap is going to melt, then the other. (I forget the order, sorry.) Also, some movie I saw showed how things would be getting so hot that there would be constant blizzards, and people would be forced to announce traumatic developments to each other in stentorian cliches as cars crash through the window. Should I get off this globe while the getting’s good?
— Sincerely, Frank Lee Gullie Bull

Seems you’re onto something, Frank.

According to a recent finding even more credible than Green Peace press releases and cruddy movies, if we don’t act now to tone down industrial activity by making it too expensive to do we’ll possibly end up with a $9.6 trillion price tag for the devastation which “unchecked” global warming “could” cost us. This is the message of a recent “hard-hitting British study” by official Brit economist Sir Nicholas Stern, who spends more than 700 pages toting up the numbers and advocating taxes on carbon emissions to forestall the warming (we’re learning that you can make a giant weather-control machine out of cogs and taxes). As Prime Minister Blair puts it, “If the science is right, the consequences for our planet are disastrous.” They’re so worried, in fact, that the British government is hiring Al Gore as a consultant. He starts Monday.

Now, you know that the British government is right on top of this when not only are they occasionally casting the hypothetical premises of their hypothetical syllogisms in hypothetical form, but are also hiring a hot-air specialist like Al Gore as their global-warming consultant.

Omigod. That — that’s — that’s terrible. Trillions?

Yes. Terrible. Trillions. Women and minorities would be hit especially hard.

Omigod.

Yes.

O — mi — god. What I want to know is, what were human beings thinking when we started creating variation in the average global climate that had never deviated from year to year ever before?? I wish we could have just left the average global temperature the way it was!

Yes.

Gawd. Why oh why did we have to turn the earth into such a bleak, arid, ravaged, selfish, capitalistic, ember-and-burnt-lint-strewn, crater-filled landscape? Stupid, stupid, stupid!

And when you add to the global warming the nuclear winter and the loss of ozone thanks to Arid Extra Dry, it’s not only trillions, it’s trillions and trillions and trillions, as further studies could probably also be commissioned to show. I am more and more inclined to believe, myself, that once the earth becomes a lifeless husk, world GDP will slump by at least half. So, sure, setting up shop on an orb thus far untouched by humanity’s intrusively life-enabling, carbon-belching technologies doesn’t sound like a bad idea right now! I salute your vision and intrepidity.

Planet Mars, here I come!

Good luck there.

DEAR DR. KNOW-IT-ALL: If one is inadequately deaf, should that disqualify one from a position of leadership?
– Sincerely, Vera E. Liptic

Thanks for the question, Vera, but for this column we want only questions dealing with assumptions people in the real world might plausibly make. It’s transparently obvious that the more intact or robust one’s faculties of perception, the more effectively one can gather data about the world that can direct one’s actions — whether to lead others or to attain any other practical purpose. Equally obviously, any reasonable person who knows something about the five senses can only agree. Now, if you have a question that has something to do with things actually going on in the world –

I was alluding to the situation at Gallaudet University, a university for the deaf which, eighteen years ago, was wracked by student protests demanding that the new president be deaf. And which, through much of 2006, was wracked by similar protests of the new appointment of Jane Fernandes as president. In late October, the Fernandes appointment was withdrawn after protesters blocked the gates to the campus for several days, making it impossible for the university to function. When they learned of their victory, some protesters happily burned Jane Fernandes in effigy.

Fernandez was born deaf, so the situation is not an exact parallel to the controversy in 1988. But she grew up lip-reading and did not learn American Sign Language until her 20s; i.e., she’s ASL-impaired. And she apparently does not buy into some of the assumptions of “deaf culture” or “deaf identity” that values being deaf for its own sake. She finds value in cochlear implants and other possible treatments of deafness, which annoys some deaf persons.

I stand corrected. Some people apparently do believe the sort of thing you’re talking about.

Well, I can’t say much briefly about the campus politics at Gallaudet, which involve a variety of grievances with the administration and Fernandes, a former provost of the school. (Although I’m suspicious of the talk about how “stakeholders,” i.e., students who want to skip class, haven’t been getting enough of a say in how the school is governed.) But it is clear that Fernandes was considered objectionable not simply because she was a generically “divisive” choice, or a “poor leader,” as some protesters spun things when talking to reporters. A big reason she’s “divisive” is that many at Gallaudet — and many of those around the country who egged on the protesters — decline to accept the obvious.

Not everyone spins what they believe for public consumption, however. Here is what a certain Bridgette 813 has to say at her blog: “Perhaps the most troubling thing about Fernandez is her statement about ‘beneficial medical advances.’ She believes that genetics are a great advance for deaf people, because it may enable them to have children who aren’t deaf. That’s like saying that if you find out your child will have a darker skin tone, you terminate the pregnancy … because being dark-skinned is too much of a difficulty to place on a child. (This is the argument that’s based on believing that deafness is a disability, rather than simply another physical feature.)”

There are plenty of echoes in the deaf community of Miss 813’s sentiments, if not her particular non sequiturs. Alas, many who spurn opportunities to treat deafness are concerned not primarily with the special difficulties some individuals might have with cochlear implants or other treatments. Rather, they reject the very notion that “deafness is a disability,” i.e., a lack of an ability that one would be better off having. And they fear the waning of the culture of deafness that might attend effective solutions to the problem.

Some would even deliberately inflict their disability on innocent others. A few years ago a lesbian couple, Duchesneau and Candy McCullough, deliberately sought to create a deaf “designer baby” using the donated sperm of a friend with five generations of deafness in his family. They preferred that the child share their impediment rather than be normally equipped to function in the world. Some deaf persons sympathized with and supported this decision. On this basis, blind, one-legged and/or paraplegic parents would also be justified in ordering up a baby that will share their disabilities. Such conduct is a symptom not of a reasonable grappling with one’s problems but of a destructive tribalism.

We can say that deafness is not a disability only if hearing is not an ability. But hearing is in fact an ability. It is the ability to hear.

DEAR DR. KNOW-IT-ALL: Just before the election I received a fundraising letter from Bill Clinton and the Democrats that said, “We’ve got to stop fighting each other over issues designed to divide us and instead come together to accomplish the great things we can all agree on.” What does this mean?
– Sincerely, E.C. Lee B. Fuddled

I’ll tell you exactly what it means. It means we’ve got to stop fighting each other over issues designed to divide us, and instead fight each other over issues that — uh, no, wait a minute, I think it’s that … okay, now I’ve got it. We’re supposed to abstain from political compulsion altogether and “come together to accomplish the great things,” right, but only the great things “we can all agree on.” So, how I read this, is, Bill Clinton and the Democrats will from now on stop trying to tax us to accomplish the things that we disagree about (since those are the ones about which we can’t all agree). Bottom line, per Clinton we’ll be doing all projects on a basis of purely voluntary cooperation from now on! Nobody will be forced to fund or participate in projects they don’t want to have anything to do with ever, ever again!

Oh hallelujah. I never thought I’d see this day. Thank you for sharing Clinton’s announcement. Everybody, spread the word. This is fantastic.

DEAR DR. KNOW-IT-ALL: Isn’t it horrible how the formerly popular Reverend Ted Haggard had homosexual sex with a homosexual prostitute, was exposed just in the time for the election by the now-former prostitute, at first lied about what he had done, then admitted his “dark and repulsive” acts in a letter that was read to his former congregation after the youngsters had been sent away?

Not at all. If only all preachers who preach against gay sex would have the gay sex, then be exposed, by prostitutes, close to elections, acknowledging same “dark and repulsive” conduct in letters read aloud to former congregations once the youngsters have been sent away. Think about it. We don’t want the children to remain in the room, do we?

DEAR DR. KNOW-IT-ALL: I have a problem that I hope you can help me with.

Of course I can. What is your problem? And stop crying. I hate a crybaby.

It’s like this. I take in upwards of two trillion dollars a year but spend even more, and would love to flush even more cash than that down the toilet if I could. This is what I excel at, and I want to achieve my full potential and self-actualize and whatnot, which is good for the country also. But some putrid scum called fiscal conservatives are trying to — sob! — “rein me in.” They don’t understand that we need to invest in our future if we expect to … uh, I forget how it goes but something about “invest” and “future,” and I’ve got to be as engorged and flatulent as possible in order for this to happen. Also, the children. We mustn’t forget about them. What should I do? Please help!
– Sincerely, Fred R. L. Bud Jett

You make me sick, Fred. You’re flabby, distended and overextended, and from what I hear deploying the moiety of your ill-gotten ungainliness to meddle constantly in affairs none of your concern. Can’t you commit yourself to a whole new way of life, as your former partner in crime Bill Clinton has done in an inspiring recent fundraising letter? But instead of acknowledging and seeking to improve your condition, you’re lurching to worsen it, exploiting millions of Americans who let you willy-nilly leech off them in support of your abusive cravings. Do you really expect them to enable your conduct indefinitely on the basis of the sort of puerile rationalizations you’re peddling?

Well, it’s worked so far.

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David M. Brown (davidmbrown.com) is a freelance writer and editor. He runs the Laissez Faire Books Blog and has his own little infrequently updated webzine, The Webzine, at TheWebzine.com, that will one day be imbued with new life.