Wash-CAP making waves and headlines
Some Hollywood type once opined that "there is no such thing as bad publicity." If that's the case, this has been a banner week for Wash-CAP, the Washington State Communication Access Project.
On Tuesday Feb. 17, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer ran what I thought was a very nice story about our movie-captioning lawsuit. The P-I does give readers the opportunity to comment, and boy, did they -- mostly hostile, of course, from people who think lawyers are crooks and laws don't really apply.
A couple of days later, the North Seattle Herald sort of piled on with an editorial opining that our lawsuit wasn't necessary. The editorial was obviously based only on the P-I story -- I doubt the editor had read our complaint, and certainly didn't talk to me or anyone on the Wash-CAP board. I fired off a response -- we'll see if that ever appears in print.
Some really good ink on Saturday, though, from the Kitsap Sun, our county-wide daily newspaper, reporting on our agreement with Washington State Ferries. The really surprising thing was the prominence they gave the story -- the top of Page One! And we even had a rare non-snarky response from somebody who said that captioning announcements on the boats could really help.
We've also been on the radio recently. I did an interview Wednesday on the movie case with Dori Monson of KIRO Radio in Seattle, our local Rush Limbaugh right-wing wannabee, who basically did a lot of hufing and puffing that amounted, in the end, to saying we just should stay home and rent the DVDs, and not appear in public. He was upset, apparently, at the thought that private businesses have to spend money to accommodate folks who, in his view, won't help themselves. I'd like him to spend a few days with any of us to learn how much work we all have to do to stay involved in the world.
I didn't hear it, (radio not being exactly user-friendly to the hard of hearing), but I was told by some friends who did that we got some nice mentions this morning on KOMO Radio, the other Seattle news station, about the WSF lawsuit and its resolution.
It's disheartening sometimes that the initial reaction from many folks is that we should simply go away. Change isn't easy, and unfortunately, too many people think that if we (or any other group) gets something, it must mean that they will get less.
I take some comfort, though, in the realization that acceptance of "the other" has been going on almost since time began. It's interesting, sometimes, to read the ancient laws laid down in Leviticus, for example. In some respects, the laws of 1,200 B.C. aren't that much different than modern law. The difference comes from who the law benefits -- 3,000 years ago, the law benefitted free male adults, while slaves, women and children were treated essentially like cattle. Progress does come ... not as fast as we'd like, but it does happen.
