Editors at the New York Post say New York Governor David Paterson can’t do his job well because he’s blind. They argue that Paterson needs to rehire Charles O’Byrne, a top aide who was fired last year for tax evasion.

An excerpt:

Today Albany teeters on bankruptcy.

Paterson’s blindness severely constricts his ability to acquire basic information.

His administration is adrift; he is inconsistent, imprecise and often contradictory in his public statements.

To put it bluntly, the governor needs competent help.

Writing in Politico.com, Ben Smith says the Post has said “publicly something that’s often said privately.” An excerpt:

Paterson’s inability to read means that aides read him newspapers and government documents. It means that, he said at one point, he spent a staggering 60 hours memorizing his State of the State address — but the version he gave departed widely from the prepared text distributed to the press. His office, and advocates for the blind, have complained vociferously about a harsh caricature of his disability on “Saturday Night Live.” But is it permitted to question, respectfully, whether blindness and inability to read are making it hard for him to govern?

Stephen Kuusisto and William Peace argue that such logic doesn’t take into account Paterson’s competencies, the enormity of the ecomomic downturn, and society’s historic biases against people with disabilities.

See earlier post — Paterson: Disability bias stronger than racism

This entry was posted on Sunday, March 1st, 2009 at 9:58 pm and is filed under blindness/visual impairments, politics, public attitudes, stereotypes. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.