The Jerry Springer Effect & Chris Rufo

They allowed themselves to become the anti-woke hammer that sees every nail as woke

Good morning,

Sometimes there are battles that one doesn’t ask for.

Last Friday, a slew of conservatives decided to attack an ASL interpreter who was working a Los Angeles press conference. The crime? Wokeism.

I thought this charge was absurd. I wrote several X posts explaining why the ASL interpreter was necessary. A fellow writer asked me to sum up my thoughts for a national newspaper op-ed. However, the angle I chose was different from what was expected. I think they wanted a more personal piece and, even though this controversy touches deafness, it is not personal. I am not a ASL user and I have no incentive to defend the deaf culture — I was shamed and ostracized during the deaf identity wars in the early 2000s for getting a cochlear implant. But right is right.

The piece…

****************

The Jerry Springer effect is hard at play in today’s political world. I recently watched Netflix’s new documentary on The Jerry Springer Show and the memory trip back into the 1990s reminded me of how easily the manufacturing of outrage to capture eyeballs can lead to new cultural lows. The most striking thing was the show creators’ absolute lack of remorse for their reckless provocateurship. They simply left the fire of outrage in their wake.

As the Palisades Fire raged over the hill from my home, I received a X post by Christopher Rufo from a friend. A fellow at the Manhattan Institute, Rufo is known for fighting the illiberal woke movement that has transformed many American institutions with DEI policies. When I clicked open the post, I was not expecting to enter into a culture battle where the Jerry Springer effect of outrage, falsehoods, and moral callousness was already in play.

ASL interpreter, Bennie Barber (right side), signs during Los Angeles press conference on the wildfires

The post featured a video of an ASL (American Sign Language) interpreter, Bennie Barber, signing for the deaf during a Los Angeles city government press conference on the wildfires. Above the video, I saw Rufo’s comment: “I'm sorry, but we have to stop with the ridiculous sign language interpreters, who turn serious press conferences into a farce. There are closed captions on all broadcast channels and streaming services. No wild human gesticulators necessary.”

My initial thought was: in the midst of death and losses from catastrophic fires you are attacking an ASL interpreter providing vital information to deaf people? Then I felt outrage at Rufo’s dehumanizing description of ASL interpreters as “wild human gesticulators” turning a presser into “a farce.”

He was not alone. Charlie Kirk of Turning Point USA called the presence of ASL interpreters a “joke.” Political activist, Jack Posobiec, said, “We don't need these strange-looking sign language people at every official proceeding.” Then there was conservative commentator and admitted racist, Richard Hanania, who called the presence of the ASL interpreter “woke” and said, “you inconvenience everyone for a small minority in the name of equality. It’s obnoxious.” Also, the same guy:

Their argument, in general, was that the advent of captions and AI captions made the need for interpreters obsolete.

I was born profoundly deaf. Through great difficulty, I learned how to lipread and communicate orally. The irony here for me is that I still remember the outrage not too long ago over adding captions to televisions in public spaces because they, again, inconvenienced people by covering the lower part of the screen.

As much progress we have made in captions by man and AI, the technology is not there. I recently saw “Mufasa” and tried the AI captioning on my phone but it could not capture the sound effectively. The acoustics within the churches were no better and anything outside has proven impossible. X has improved caption access on its platform but most videos remain without captions. Lastly, the local news often uses auto-generated cations which are inaccurate at times and even delayed by minutes. This, too, can happen with press conferences.

The main charge of Rufo against Bennie Barber, the targeted ASL interpreter, was that he was wildly dramatic and that his facial expressions were unnecessary contortions.

While ASL is not my native language, I have spent years of my life in the deaf community and the facial expressions used by Barber, a child of deaf adults (CODA), met the professional standard.

What Rufo and company refused to acknowledge was that ASL is not like any other language, including English, because its existence is due to deafness. Many deaf individuals grow up with ASL as their primary, sometimes only, language. Many are not fluent in English which follows a language structure different from ASL. For example, in English, we say, “I am finished eating this hamburger” and in ASL we sign, “eat hamburger finish.”

What the facial expressions convey along with the signs is tone, emotion, and meaning the way adjectives do in the English language. A facial expression of “I’m full” along with “eat hamburger finish” conveys a different opinion of the meal than a facial expression of “wow amazing”. The meaning that ASL users get from these signs is far more accurate than captions and that is why it was essential to have an ASL interpreter conveying vital information in a city with a large ASL population.

I conveyed these thoughts to Rufo, believing the champion of free thought and merit would be open-minded, but he instead doubled down. “It’s a ‘farce’ because, purely from a visual perspective,” he wrote, “it’s like putting an interpretive dance performance right next to the speaker, who is communicating a serious message. For the hearing—99%+ of the audience—it’s distracting and strange.”

Chris Rufo

I responded that this was about providing equality of access and that there was nothing Woke here. Rufo never responded and ignored my offer to talk. He had Jerry Springer-ed the situation for clicks, abdicated responsibility for the unwarranted outrage that he ignited, and left us with his mess.

I don’t believe Rufo to be a malicious man. He has his flaws, especially when he offered a $5,000 bounty for “hard, verifiable evidence that Haitian migrants are eating cats in Springfield, Ohio.” Instead, we got a blurry photo of what appears to be chicken legs on a grill and another falsely targeted population.

Jerry Springer was not the devil either when he started his show. He was the son of Holocaust Survivors and well-educated. However, he gave into baseness and famously said, “If I get into Heaven, then all of you are going.” Rufo allowed himself to slip to Jerry’s level in this case and, in doing so, did damage to his cause.

Over the last several years, deaf friends have told me how tired they are of the increasingly woke policies in their workplaces. This includes Cal State Northridge University and Gallaudet University, which employs deaf people and serves large deaf student populations. My friends have worked hard to push back against the DEI forces and return the focus to the individual. What stung them was that Rufo, through his discriminatory act, handed their DEI administrators proof of why their work was needed more than ever.

Without equality of access, I and many others would not be the productive tax-paying citizens that we are. Rufo and others claim to fight for every American and they did not extend this courtesy to the ASL population. They mistook the issue of access for Wokeism. They allowed themselves to become the anti-woke hammer that sees every nail as woke. In doing so, they have become ideological, the trait they despise in the woke culture, and by extension, they have lowered the American culture.

At the end of every show, Jerry Springer used to say, “Take care of yourselves, and each other.” After an hour of brawls and screams, his words felt insecure. But if there is anything to be learned from this fiasco it is simply this: what profit is there to sacrifice humanity in the name of your cause? Take care of yourselves, and each other.

My best,

Eli