Pennsylvania Lt. Governor and Democratic senatorial candidate John Fetterman, who is running against New Jersey’s favorite TV snake oil salesman, Mehmet Oz, gave an interview to NBC News that created a shitstorm.
This week, John Fetterman, the Democratic nominee for the Senate from Pennsylvania, appeared in what NBC News billed as his first on-camera, one-on-one interview since he had a stroke in May. The interview went well and was conducted with Mr. Fetterman and the reporter, Dasha Burns, sitting in the same room, as Mr. Fetterman used a captioning system on a computer screen to assist him with his auditory processing, something he has needed help with since the stroke.
Ms. Burns introduced the interview to the news anchor Lester Holt by saying, “In small talk before the interview without captioning, it wasn’t clear he was understanding our conversation.” With that one statement, Ms. Burns shifted the conversation away from a necessary adaptation to implying that NBC was doing Mr. Fetterman a favor by using captioning and that it was a problem for the candidate that he needed technology to reliably converse.
Others who interviewed Fetterman dispute Burns’ assertion, stating they found no issue with Fetterman’s ability to communicate. Which is true, or more true? Who knows. Pick your more credible journalist. But it generated a defense of Fetterman,under the assumption it was true, along the lines of “so what if he’s got a disability?’
Franklin Roosevelt tried to keep the press from photographing him being transferred into and out of his wheelchair. In 1964, the cover of Fact Magazine read, “1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President!” with one calling him a “dangerous lunatic.” In 1972, Thomas Eagleton was kicked off the Democratic ticket as vice president when it was revealed that he had been hospitalized for depression. In 1975, the columnist Garry Wills argued that George Wallace was unfit for office not because of his history of racism, but because he had a physical disability as a result of being shot.
But does the fact that it’s happened make it a good thing? There are elected politicians in wheel chairs, but their constituents elected them knowing they were in wheel chairs. We’ve gotten past the harshly negative view that caused FDR to conceal his disability.
But when it comes to invisible disabilities, and in particular ones that involve communication or mental function, stigma is trickier to detect and dispel.
But aren’t some disabilities sufficient to preclude someone from competently doing a job?
Some jobs require specific abilities that may not be replicable — yet — through technology or other adaptation. Spell-check will not help me be a fighter pilot since, as part of my dyslexia, I often can’t perceive up from down. A roofer needs to be able to climb a ladder. A condition like Alzheimer’s may have rendered Ronald Reagan unable to perform his duties as president long before his second term expired.
Whether it’s true that Fetterman, as a result of his stroke, suffers from an auditory processing disability is unclear. Whether assistive technology, like captioning, will enable him to perform the job of senator competently is unclear. Whether Fetterman, with this disability, the need for assistive technology and with limitations in his ability to perform the function of senator competently, and would nonetheless be a better choice for Senator from Pennsylvania than Oz are legitimate questions to be answered.
The question should be put to the voters and neither argued by disputing pundits nor activists against stigmatization. It may very well turn out that the voters of Pennsylvania will elect Fetterman regardless of a disability that will impact his ability as senator, but that should be the voters’ choice based on a factual understanding of Fetterman’s real condition, whatever that may be. We were very lucky that FDR’s concealed disability didn’t render him unable to serve as president. We may not be so lucky next time.
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