Another One!

When a British television personality calls the British Prime Minister a "one-eyed Scottish Idiot," WHAT should a conscientious blogger who regularly wanders into blindness issues do?

First read the article and consider the source.
Top Gear Presenter Apologizes for remark
To quote Charlie Brown, "Oh good grief." Turns out the Prime Minister is hardly Mr. Clarkson's first or even most tastelessly offendable target. Oh good grief. RantWoman is even sometimes a fan of British humor, but oh good grief!

(RantWoman special note: the bbc websites are on RantWoman's list of examples of things done right as far as accessibility. The site behaves well with screen readers. It has links to low-graphics or enlarged text views. Alas, the printable option does not appear to offer the option of fond enlargement, but RantWoman being a versatile girl, she could think of ways around this. All this is probably the result of efforts by the Royal National Institute for the Blind, RNIB and has little to do with the Prime Minister's vision issues.)

What next? Thunder to the Prime Minister's defense? Cluck about oh those wacky Brits who keep a stiff upper lip except when they let fly all over the Prime Minister? The first thing RantWoman did was head to Wikipedia to see what the aforementioned television host was talking about. RantWoman does not mean about the economic crisis.

Gordon Brown's early life according to Wikipedia

Turns out the future prime minister suffered in his youth from an excess of rugby or at least one too many feet hitting his face during a rugby game. This is a classic recipe for a detached retina, and the risk of such during contact sports is one reasons RantWoman's brother had to fend off repeated overtures by school football coaches. In fact just the other day RantWoman was lecturing the triplets' father who says he is severely nearsighted about how he should never, ever play raquetball without eye protection, a promise he had already made himself after getting hit once rather painfully in the eye.

But back to Gordon Brown and rugby. At the time the preferred therapy was still one of the things RantWoman's grandfather endured: lie in a darkened room for weeks with blocks around the head to prevent movement of the head and further motion disconnecting the retina from the optic nerve. Wikipedia thankfully spares us the medical details of further surgery except to say that vision in one eye was lost, When the future prime minister started experiencing similar symptoms in his other eye, the doctors were able to save vision in that eye, but Wikipedia does not mention whether more lying around in a darkened room was involved.

RantWoman really has no basis for speculating, but how much vision one gets back after retina detachment and how many grow-your-own-lava-lamp bubbles or pangs in bright light can vary a lot. Despite ravings from a tv personality, Prime Minister Brown is obviously a bright well-read, accomplished guy. Or maybe he covers well for any discomfort.

So, should blind people claim him even if he himself might not see things that way? Or to put it another way, are one-eyed idiots any more or less problematic than two-eyed idiots? Are one-eyed Scottish idiots somehow more scandalous than idiots from elsewhere in the British isles? Remember, RantWoman is not going near the substance of debate about economic policy, but as long as big-mouthed commentators think of the prime minister as blind, I think blind commentators should stick up for him! Just don't ask RantWoman about the economic crisis.