Saturday, March 29, 2008

Case Studies In Why HRC's Exist

Today's case study comes to us from none other than The Ezra himself.

Most of his post is his perceptions of a hearing in the Marc Lemire case currently before the federal CHRC. Since I wasn't present at the hearing, I'm not going to comment on Ezra's stated perception of how things went. There's lots of accounts out there if you wish to sift through them all.

However, I'm going to pick on the most fetid part of Levant's posting, where he goes on the attack against one of the tribunal's investigators:

Which brings us to the matter of Steacy himself. He's blind, and he has an assistant help him function -- no doubt a double-expense that the CHRC regards as a source of pride and a symbol of how the rest of society ought to work. I think it's great that Steacy is still working despite his handicap. But being an investigator, especially where the matters investigated are words and symbols and intricate websites, requires eyesight. Keeping a lead investigator who is blind isn't just an act of supreme political correctness, it's an act that so obviously risks the integrity of the commission's work. Again, if it helps, imagine if an investigator hunting real crimes, not thought crimes, were blind. It's inconceivable that any defence lawyer wouldn't immediately object to any of the evidence that such an investigator collected, on the grounds that it was flawed; I can't imagine any criminal judge accepting such evidence -- if it related to anything important, it would simply provide "reasonable doubt" to any charge, and yield an acquittal. It's so ridiculous, it wouldn't even fly in a fictional TV show, even the most politically correct of the Law and Order series just wouldn't be able to have a blind investigator without fans jeering "yeah, right".



Apparently, it's vastly beyond Ezra's ability to imagine that a blind person could do their job effectively. I'm not blind myself, but I went through my undergraduate degree with a blind man in many of my classes. Although there were certainly places where he struggled with things, he was unquestionably smart, and very creative in his solution to the various problems that his visual difficulties presented in dealing with material which often was described in very visual terms. Sorry Ezra, but your inability to imagine someone doing a job or role doesn't mean that they can't do it - period.

Frankly, if anything, this tells us more about Ezra himself and why he hates the HRC process so much. Quite simply, Ezra himself is so filled with his own self-importance that he will do anything possible to continue justifying his stance - including attacking someone for their disability, when he obviously knows somewhere between very little and nothing about how the individual does their job.

I hope nobody with a disability of any sort ever applies to work in Ezra's office - I can hardly imagine a more hostile environment to end up working in. (But then, I suspect that like a 'white supremacist' won't hire a black man, Ezra wouldn't hire someone with disabilities - it would be too laughable for him to imagine that they might be able to do a job at all, much less do so effectively)

While being blind doesn't render someone stupid, it would seem that Ezra's ego renders him blind.

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