Call for Letters to the Editor

From: Bryan Bashin (bashin@calweb.com)
Date: Sun Dec 15 1996 - 23:57:33 PST


CALL FOR LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

COLUMNIST EQUATES SAN FRANCISCO MAYOR'S BLINDNESS WITH
DEPENDENCE, IGNORANCE

"If a leader has great difficulty in reading, it means more
dependence on old knowledge, past attitudes and what he or she is
told by others."

   --Bill Bradley, Sacramento News & Review, 12/5/96

Dear Friends,

Last week Sacramento News & Review columnist Bill Bradley
published a critique of a recent biography of Willie Brown,
former California Assembly Speaker and now Mayor of San
Francisco. Whatever one may think of Willie Brown's politics,
Bradley has deeply slandered the blind and visually-impaired
community by restating ancient libels equating blindness with
ignorance, dependence, and inability to learn.

What follows is an extended excerpt from last week's column so
readers can judge for themselves if Mr. Bradley's notions of
blind people's abilities are worthy of the 20th century.

If you are as offended by Mr. Bradley's assumptions as I was, you
can do something about it. You could write to Bradley at
bill@brad.com, but, better still, you can also write directly to
his employer, the Sacramento News & Review. Letters to the
Editor may be sent to:

     newsreview@aol.com, or
     71632.116@compuserve.com

Additionally, voicemail Letters to the Editor can be recorded by
telephoning (916) 498-1234 extension 3344.

Finally, the newspaper's editorial fax number is (916) 498-7920.

Please don't let your silence give the News and Review editors
the impression that it's OK to assume that blindness will of
necessity result in ignorance, passivity, and dependence.

At the very least, a full published apology is in order.

-----------------

SACRAMENTO NEWS AND REVIEW
December 5, 1996

"BROWN OUT"
    by Bill Bradley

Bill Bradley, an advisor in several presidential and
gubernatorial campaigns, can be reached at bill@brad.com.

QUOTED TEXT BEGINS HERE

     ..."Things began to unravel for Brown in a conference call
with reporters in the Bay Area. In the now-infamous interview,
he called backup San Francisco 49ers quarterback Elvis Grbac,
whose poor play cost the Niners a bitter overtime defeat at the
hands of the hated Dallas Cowboys, "an embarrassment to
humankind." When one reporter tried to warn Brown that he was
going overboard, the tart-tongued mayor brushed him aside and
went on to declare that Grbac would certainly never play in any
new stadium that he helped to build.

     Apres deluge, Mr. Mayor. Live by celebrity; die by
celebrity.

     The result was a firestorm that left Brown's career-long
crony, San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen, wondering
publicly if, after the Grbac Gaffe and this pretentious and
possibly illegally financed junket, Brown could ever recover the
lofty public standing he had enjoyed for the past year after
trouncing incumbent Frank Jordan. In the meantime, Brown's image
is in little better shape than the bouquet of flowers he sent
Grbac as a belated apology. Grbac's teammates did everything but
urinate on the pretty little roses.

     "The guy is just kind of a bozo, you know?" offensive tackle
Harris Barton, a key leader on most of the 49ers' championship
teams, told reporters covering the team. "He'd be the first one
standing in line to hold the Super Bowl trophy if we won it."

     The irony is that if Brown were able to read normally, it
might not have happened. For the Bay Area press had earlier
reported that Grbac was distracted by his infant son's spina
bifida, a condition requiring an operation to cover an exposed
section of the baby's spine. But Brown didn't know that. He
didn't know it because he didn't read it. He didn't read it
because he has very poor eyesight. And no one told him about it
before his telephone press conference.

     That Brown's reading ability is so impaired is an important
thing to know about a political leader. After all, one's ability
to take in and absorb new information is of critical importance
in this information age. If a leader has great difficulty in
reading, it means more dependence on old knowledge, past
attitudes and what he or she is told by others.

     That Brown's eyesight is severely impaired in this way is
something you might expect to by fully explored in a 400-plus
page, in-depth biography that was more than four years in the
making. Unfortunately, Willie Brown: A Biography (University of
California Press, $29.95), by veteran Sacramento Bee reporter
James Richardson, does not do that..."

--END QUOTED TEXT--



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