Excellent post, Eli. You have convinced me, and your are right on about Rufo. I hate to admit it but I have been mildly annoyed by the ASL interpreters. No more! And, as I approach my ninth decade wearing hearing aids (I got my father's ears), I appreciate subtitles and use them often.
And you've probably noticed, many of the subtitles are just wrong. I don't wear hearing aids, but at 77, I use the subtitles on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and often rewind when there's a discrepancy between what was said and the subtitles. They're not quite ready for Prime Time.
I don't know if they still do this, but a friend's husband satisfied their language requirement at Rochester Institute of Technology ~25 years ago by taking ASL, so it's absolutely recognized as a separate and useful language.
I am truly appalled by this! I am 83 years old and have seen sign language interpreters for decades. How can anyone be mindful of them? They are there for a legitimate reason and it sickens me to hear this nonsense about being distracted by them.
Eli, this is a beautifully written and compelling piece. i agree with your points and am disappointed in Rufo, Kirk, et al., for their knee-jerk reactions, which are childish and embarrassing
Thanks for writing this, Eli. I always enjoyed watching the ASL interpreters who aided the deaf students in my classes. But then, I was a linguistics student back then, so it was fascinating from a linguistics point of view. The interpreters were clearly working so hard—I wasn’t sure how they had the stamina to interpret a whole three hour lecture. I’m very disappointed in Chris Rufo, who—though he does seem to go too far on occasion—has had a lot of sensible takes on various issues over the past few years. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head 😉, suggesting he’s become overly enthralled with his anti-woke stance and is now applying it indiscriminately.
I'm shocked at Rufo's idiotic response. It demonstrates a level of ignorance I would not have predicted from him.
I've followed Rufo since I first saw him interviewed by Benjamin Boyce regarding DEI in corporate America, I'm figuring that was about five years ago. He really impressed me then. I also saw the documentary he made for PBS, about poverty in the United States. It was profound and very moving. I also followed his work with Gov. DeSantis in getting DEI and critical race theory removed from Florida's universities.
The fact that he doesn't understand what American Sign Language is, and would mischaracterize it in such an offensive and ignorant manner, is very disappointing. I hope he will take the time to educate himself about the nature of deafness.
Having an ASL interpreter on the dais doing his job so that deaf viewers can follow the content, does not diminish the experience of hearing a speech that Rufo could just as easily have listened to with his eyes closed.
I share a similar view. The first issue I noticed was when they were doing the education plans for black history in FL and they botched the messaging. My father and Thomas Sowell were also listed as leaders of the Civil Rights movement, which was not true. We got the ridicule on our end even though we had nothing to do with that. Sloppy.
Thank you Eli, for explaining to me about the importance of the facial expressions. Now instead of thinking that they are distracting, I will appreciate them.
This points up something that has been upsetting me for the past several years. I am a generally open-minded conservative and traditionally religious, and it's grieving me that my own ideological brethren are increasingly playing into the stereotype the hard left assigns to them. They do this out of ignorance and intellectual smugness.
These complaints about ASL interpreters appearing on screen remind me of incidents at church. I'll walk in, check the door at the top of the handicapped ramp, and find it locked. I'll go into the sacristy to berate the trads who are preparing for mass or finishing up, and I'll complain that they're locking out the handicapped. They'll arrogantly ask me, "How many people actually use that door?" I'll assert, "It doesn't matter if it's zero people or a hundred people! They should have free entrance to the church at any time!" Then they tell me the disabled person should send their companion in to find someone with a key to open up. Besides the fact that such a person could have to sit out there in weather well below freezing, and the fact that their companion won't know who's got a key, I point out that many disabled people can drive and travel alone and won't have anyone to send in.
They do what I tell them to (although they'll "forget" again later), but common sense and compassion get me labeled a bleeding heart or a wokester by my own people!
You nailed it from a different perspective. It is incredibly frustrating. What is interesting is their faith counsels otherwise, but it seems as if they're letting politics or their resentment of the other side dictate their action. Thank you for sharing this.
I think the smug arrogance is worse in the secular world and among atheists. At least in Christianity the people have some reference outside themselves and you can find your tribe, either within the parish or at another parish. The smug arrogance isn't general to Christianity. I'm assuming you mean all Christian denominations including Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc., and not just nondenominational evangelical Protestantism.
I would judge Protestantism most harshly here since that is the belief tradition that I grew up in. I know little of other belief cultures beyond what I have seen/read in media.
As far as the secular world, I have no expectation there because they don’t preach a gospel of love and redemption as core tenets of their philosophy.
Christianity does which is why it is so disappointing when adherents don’t embody these values and instead leverage their purported moral superiority as a weapon.
If you were brought up as a Protestant, you were probably taught angry, age-old lies about Catholicism and Orthodoxy that can be easily refuted by looking the topics up in a catechism. I don't know if these Protestants are aware they're lying or if those lies have been repeated for so many centuries that they just parrot them. Back when Bibles were copied by hand and had immense monetary value, Catholic institutions used to chain them to tables in the libraries. Protestants claim that was to keep people from reading the Bible, but in fact it was to make sure more people could read the Bible by ensuring nobody walked away with it. My comeback is always, "Back when they still had phone booths, why did they chain the phone book into the booth?"
No, not really. We were Methodist and I never heard negative comments. My first husband was a former Jehovah’s Witness and he was taught some negative things. Personally, having studied art history, I am grateful for the legacy of great art and architecture underwritten by the Catholic Church.
Have you ever seen the episode of "King of the Hill" where Bobby asks his father what Methodism is and his dad can't answer it? They go ask their pastor, and she can't come up with an intelligible answer either.
This seems like a case of some of these critics, of using ASL interpreters at public events, almost willfully failing to make meaningful distinctions. Whom is the ASL interpreters’ presence actually hurting? And their sophomoric snark in defense of that criticism is revealing. It’s true that sometimes ASL interpreters have come off as so broadly theatrical it’s made easy fodder for satire. More seriously, a handful of cases of frauds giddily impersonating interpreters and signing utter nonsense - and getting away with it through entire events - have perhaps undermined, for some, the seriousness of that job for those who truly rely on having more than inadequate or inaccurate captioning to understand important public events. In other words, amid this badly needed pushback against woke bullying and tyranny, ASL interpreters have, ironically, become easy targets for cheap ridicule. Who is actually so distracted by an ASL interpreter that it affects their ability to absorb a speech? For so many of the normal liberals among us, who have lost a number of once-close friends and social and career opportunities, due to the insane intolerance and unapologetic discrimination of woke bullies, one of the more annoying contentions we’ve had to confront is the dismissive notion that what we’re opposed to is simply basic decency - a simple generosity of spirit and willingness to not be “mean”, or gratuitously exclude those different from ourselves. In this case, some of these anti-woke conservative allies are, by stooping to such pointless pettiness, giving normal, tolerant, reasonably inclusive liberals a bad name, by association. Worse, they are undermining critical causes like getting ugly, bigoted, discriminatory DEI out of public and private institutions and replacing it with a true focus on treating each of us fairly as individuals, based on our own merit, ability, effort, and character. ASL interpreters can look a bit silly, perhaps, to people who don’t know how they fill in gaps in conveying important information for people who rely on their services. Grow up. As long as they are legit interpreters who are helping people, there is zero harm to their role. And if they are helping some of our fellow citizens participate in society, I’m glad to see them on stage.
Thank you for this spot on and most eloquent comment. This is exactly how I feel about not only this issue, but about other conservative pettiness that I have encountered in my reading on Substack.
I will be archiving your comment for future reference.
Thanks for an extremely thoughtful piece. Interesting parallel in connecting back to Springer. A reminder that being right (pun intended) on one topic does not translate into carte blanche or confer “expert” status on anybody. Chris Rufo did the world a service with America’s Cultural Revolution, but your exposition makes this look like a big swing and miss driven by being under-informed and kinda mean. If I hadn’t seen your write up, I might have nodded along with their view. Thanks for yours.
I am a licensed and certified ASL Interpreter. Many people think we are just “flapping our hands” and exaggerating facial expressions and body movements, so Thank you for sharing this information and for your diligence in explaining that ASL is the natural language of many Deaf/deaf individuals and often captions are wrong. There are many English words that do not have an equivalent sign, and Facial expressions and body language is necessary and apart of this language, without it the interpretation would not convey the correct meaning of the message…
I am ashamed to say I sort of agreed with Chris Rufo's post the first time I read it. I didn't pick up how insensitive it was. Thank you for setting me straight. I am very disappointed in Charlie Kirk, Chris Rufo and Jack Posobiec, but this shows their ignorance of the needs of deaf individuals to be included in important communications. I dropped the link to your article in the posts on X from Charlie Kirk and Chris Rufo. I hope someone get the message.
Your explanation of the use of facial expressions made lots of sense. Thank you for writing such a thorough, respectful challenge to insensitive posts.
I appreciate this, Julie. I'm often in your shoes at lot. Sometimes my first impression isn't always right. But that's what learning is all about, isn't it?
Excellent piece - thank you for it. (always wondered if those expressions were specific and informational)
I'm pretty sure Rufo has either been overcome by the emotional fun of scoring points (plenty of modern examples of those who went weird, as they finally got off the soapbox where they seemed charming underdogs, and onto a stage), or else perhaps always was more irritable than philosophical (it can be hard to tell those apart, when the message we first hear from someone is generally welcome). He's been feuding with former ally Brunet, for one, who still seems to dig in the same line, but also seems to stick more closely to principles, so as to keep the strength of his arguments consistent. (a woefully rare discipline)
Same basic problem as idiot lefties making principles I still consider important - look mostly like dogmatic excuses to abuse others - foul and manipulative.
To "represent" - one first needs to earn an adult-shaped ego - THEN, proceed.
(No sophistry on earth beats reality-engagement and self-overcoming)
Without knowing Rufo or Kirk’s views until your post, I have had slight skepticism myself of seeing them more often used by democrats. But really, there was an ASL interpreter during worship, events & sermon at a church I once attended, and my attitude was entirely different. At church, I found it a good thing. In politics, I denigrated it. Great post. Needs to be shared. 👋 As I do!! Thank you!!
Excellent post, Eli. You have convinced me, and your are right on about Rufo. I hate to admit it but I have been mildly annoyed by the ASL interpreters. No more! And, as I approach my ninth decade wearing hearing aids (I got my father's ears), I appreciate subtitles and use them often.
And you've probably noticed, many of the subtitles are just wrong. I don't wear hearing aids, but at 77, I use the subtitles on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and often rewind when there's a discrepancy between what was said and the subtitles. They're not quite ready for Prime Time.
I don't know if they still do this, but a friend's husband satisfied their language requirement at Rochester Institute of Technology ~25 years ago by taking ASL, so it's absolutely recognized as a separate and useful language.
Thank you, Jerry. Yes, subtitles are great. We are fortunate to have them.
I am truly appalled by this! I am 83 years old and have seen sign language interpreters for decades. How can anyone be mindful of them? They are there for a legitimate reason and it sickens me to hear this nonsense about being distracted by them.
Eli, this is a beautifully written and compelling piece. i agree with your points and am disappointed in Rufo, Kirk, et al., for their knee-jerk reactions, which are childish and embarrassing
Thank you, Steve. Great to hear from you. I hope you have been well. My best to Nancy.
we are all good - are you OK with the fires? your kids must be growing up - did you follow Shelby and Rita to Arizona?
Yes. “Immature” came to mind as I was reading this. It is a complaint of children.
Thanks for writing this, Eli. I always enjoyed watching the ASL interpreters who aided the deaf students in my classes. But then, I was a linguistics student back then, so it was fascinating from a linguistics point of view. The interpreters were clearly working so hard—I wasn’t sure how they had the stamina to interpret a whole three hour lecture. I’m very disappointed in Chris Rufo, who—though he does seem to go too far on occasion—has had a lot of sensible takes on various issues over the past few years. I think you’ve hit the nail on the head 😉, suggesting he’s become overly enthralled with his anti-woke stance and is now applying it indiscriminately.
Yes, and his unwillingness to learn. They think that is a sign of weakness.
I'm shocked at Rufo's idiotic response. It demonstrates a level of ignorance I would not have predicted from him.
I've followed Rufo since I first saw him interviewed by Benjamin Boyce regarding DEI in corporate America, I'm figuring that was about five years ago. He really impressed me then. I also saw the documentary he made for PBS, about poverty in the United States. It was profound and very moving. I also followed his work with Gov. DeSantis in getting DEI and critical race theory removed from Florida's universities.
The fact that he doesn't understand what American Sign Language is, and would mischaracterize it in such an offensive and ignorant manner, is very disappointing. I hope he will take the time to educate himself about the nature of deafness.
Having an ASL interpreter on the dais doing his job so that deaf viewers can follow the content, does not diminish the experience of hearing a speech that Rufo could just as easily have listened to with his eyes closed.
I share a similar view. The first issue I noticed was when they were doing the education plans for black history in FL and they botched the messaging. My father and Thomas Sowell were also listed as leaders of the Civil Rights movement, which was not true. We got the ridicule on our end even though we had nothing to do with that. Sloppy.
Wow. It’s much worse than I imagined.
Another person I had put on a pedestal.
I should know better. That’s on me.
Thank you Eli, for explaining to me about the importance of the facial expressions. Now instead of thinking that they are distracting, I will appreciate them.
thanks,
randy
I follow that thread and agree with you 100% as a former deaf-ed teacher. Rufo went off the rails.
This points up something that has been upsetting me for the past several years. I am a generally open-minded conservative and traditionally religious, and it's grieving me that my own ideological brethren are increasingly playing into the stereotype the hard left assigns to them. They do this out of ignorance and intellectual smugness.
These complaints about ASL interpreters appearing on screen remind me of incidents at church. I'll walk in, check the door at the top of the handicapped ramp, and find it locked. I'll go into the sacristy to berate the trads who are preparing for mass or finishing up, and I'll complain that they're locking out the handicapped. They'll arrogantly ask me, "How many people actually use that door?" I'll assert, "It doesn't matter if it's zero people or a hundred people! They should have free entrance to the church at any time!" Then they tell me the disabled person should send their companion in to find someone with a key to open up. Besides the fact that such a person could have to sit out there in weather well below freezing, and the fact that their companion won't know who's got a key, I point out that many disabled people can drive and travel alone and won't have anyone to send in.
They do what I tell them to (although they'll "forget" again later), but common sense and compassion get me labeled a bleeding heart or a wokester by my own people!
You nailed it from a different perspective. It is incredibly frustrating. What is interesting is their faith counsels otherwise, but it seems as if they're letting politics or their resentment of the other side dictate their action. Thank you for sharing this.
You are a kind man who exemplifies the best tenets of your faith. It is exactly this type of smug arrogance that drove me out of Christianity.
I think the smug arrogance is worse in the secular world and among atheists. At least in Christianity the people have some reference outside themselves and you can find your tribe, either within the parish or at another parish. The smug arrogance isn't general to Christianity. I'm assuming you mean all Christian denominations including Catholicism, Orthodoxy, etc., and not just nondenominational evangelical Protestantism.
I would judge Protestantism most harshly here since that is the belief tradition that I grew up in. I know little of other belief cultures beyond what I have seen/read in media.
As far as the secular world, I have no expectation there because they don’t preach a gospel of love and redemption as core tenets of their philosophy.
Christianity does which is why it is so disappointing when adherents don’t embody these values and instead leverage their purported moral superiority as a weapon.
If you were brought up as a Protestant, you were probably taught angry, age-old lies about Catholicism and Orthodoxy that can be easily refuted by looking the topics up in a catechism. I don't know if these Protestants are aware they're lying or if those lies have been repeated for so many centuries that they just parrot them. Back when Bibles were copied by hand and had immense monetary value, Catholic institutions used to chain them to tables in the libraries. Protestants claim that was to keep people from reading the Bible, but in fact it was to make sure more people could read the Bible by ensuring nobody walked away with it. My comeback is always, "Back when they still had phone booths, why did they chain the phone book into the booth?"
No, not really. We were Methodist and I never heard negative comments. My first husband was a former Jehovah’s Witness and he was taught some negative things. Personally, having studied art history, I am grateful for the legacy of great art and architecture underwritten by the Catholic Church.
Have you ever seen the episode of "King of the Hill" where Bobby asks his father what Methodism is and his dad can't answer it? They go ask their pastor, and she can't come up with an intelligible answer either.
This seems like a case of some of these critics, of using ASL interpreters at public events, almost willfully failing to make meaningful distinctions. Whom is the ASL interpreters’ presence actually hurting? And their sophomoric snark in defense of that criticism is revealing. It’s true that sometimes ASL interpreters have come off as so broadly theatrical it’s made easy fodder for satire. More seriously, a handful of cases of frauds giddily impersonating interpreters and signing utter nonsense - and getting away with it through entire events - have perhaps undermined, for some, the seriousness of that job for those who truly rely on having more than inadequate or inaccurate captioning to understand important public events. In other words, amid this badly needed pushback against woke bullying and tyranny, ASL interpreters have, ironically, become easy targets for cheap ridicule. Who is actually so distracted by an ASL interpreter that it affects their ability to absorb a speech? For so many of the normal liberals among us, who have lost a number of once-close friends and social and career opportunities, due to the insane intolerance and unapologetic discrimination of woke bullies, one of the more annoying contentions we’ve had to confront is the dismissive notion that what we’re opposed to is simply basic decency - a simple generosity of spirit and willingness to not be “mean”, or gratuitously exclude those different from ourselves. In this case, some of these anti-woke conservative allies are, by stooping to such pointless pettiness, giving normal, tolerant, reasonably inclusive liberals a bad name, by association. Worse, they are undermining critical causes like getting ugly, bigoted, discriminatory DEI out of public and private institutions and replacing it with a true focus on treating each of us fairly as individuals, based on our own merit, ability, effort, and character. ASL interpreters can look a bit silly, perhaps, to people who don’t know how they fill in gaps in conveying important information for people who rely on their services. Grow up. As long as they are legit interpreters who are helping people, there is zero harm to their role. And if they are helping some of our fellow citizens participate in society, I’m glad to see them on stage.
Thank you for this spot on and most eloquent comment. This is exactly how I feel about not only this issue, but about other conservative pettiness that I have encountered in my reading on Substack.
I will be archiving your comment for future reference.
Thanks for an extremely thoughtful piece. Interesting parallel in connecting back to Springer. A reminder that being right (pun intended) on one topic does not translate into carte blanche or confer “expert” status on anybody. Chris Rufo did the world a service with America’s Cultural Revolution, but your exposition makes this look like a big swing and miss driven by being under-informed and kinda mean. If I hadn’t seen your write up, I might have nodded along with their view. Thanks for yours.
Thank you, Andrew!
I am a licensed and certified ASL Interpreter. Many people think we are just “flapping our hands” and exaggerating facial expressions and body movements, so Thank you for sharing this information and for your diligence in explaining that ASL is the natural language of many Deaf/deaf individuals and often captions are wrong. There are many English words that do not have an equivalent sign, and Facial expressions and body language is necessary and apart of this language, without it the interpretation would not convey the correct meaning of the message…
It was my pleasure. Thank you for your work.
I am ashamed to say I sort of agreed with Chris Rufo's post the first time I read it. I didn't pick up how insensitive it was. Thank you for setting me straight. I am very disappointed in Charlie Kirk, Chris Rufo and Jack Posobiec, but this shows their ignorance of the needs of deaf individuals to be included in important communications. I dropped the link to your article in the posts on X from Charlie Kirk and Chris Rufo. I hope someone get the message.
Your explanation of the use of facial expressions made lots of sense. Thank you for writing such a thorough, respectful challenge to insensitive posts.
I appreciate this, Julie. I'm often in your shoes at lot. Sometimes my first impression isn't always right. But that's what learning is all about, isn't it?
Excellent piece - thank you for it. (always wondered if those expressions were specific and informational)
I'm pretty sure Rufo has either been overcome by the emotional fun of scoring points (plenty of modern examples of those who went weird, as they finally got off the soapbox where they seemed charming underdogs, and onto a stage), or else perhaps always was more irritable than philosophical (it can be hard to tell those apart, when the message we first hear from someone is generally welcome). He's been feuding with former ally Brunet, for one, who still seems to dig in the same line, but also seems to stick more closely to principles, so as to keep the strength of his arguments consistent. (a woefully rare discipline)
Same basic problem as idiot lefties making principles I still consider important - look mostly like dogmatic excuses to abuse others - foul and manipulative.
To "represent" - one first needs to earn an adult-shaped ego - THEN, proceed.
(No sophistry on earth beats reality-engagement and self-overcoming)
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Self-righteousness leads to mean girl behavior. News at 11. 😉
Without knowing Rufo or Kirk’s views until your post, I have had slight skepticism myself of seeing them more often used by democrats. But really, there was an ASL interpreter during worship, events & sermon at a church I once attended, and my attitude was entirely different. At church, I found it a good thing. In politics, I denigrated it. Great post. Needs to be shared. 👋 As I do!! Thank you!!
Thank you!
That and my prayers. The very least I can do. Thanks for bringing it to our attention!!
What positive insights we gain when we communicate. You make me think and I thank you.
Thank you for this comment.
God bless you, Eli -- you're dead right on all points. I live by CC's from a bit too much noise in my life.
Thank you, John!