I like “inconvenienced”. Will have to pass that on to the bro-in-law.

The cochlear implant has been amazing. He was 3 when he lost almost all of his hearing (the drugs that saved his life from meningitis fried his ears), so he had already been talking some and hearing so his speech was always really good and he was an excellent lip reader.

He got the implant at 22, so it’s definitely not just for kids. I’ll never forget the day he came over after first getting it hooked up. We were sitting in the living room and his mom started running water in the sink in the (adjacent, but on the other side of a wall) kitchen and he looked up and said “what’s that noise”? We couldn’t believe it. We now can get his attention by calling his name even when he’s looking the other way (w/out having to wave our arms or stomp our feet), we can speak with him on the phone w/out having to use TTM, and he can even hear us in noisy restaurants, etc. by adjusting the filter. It’s truly been life-changing.

I am sensitive to those who want to protect the ASL and deaf culture and realize that this debate is an absolute hornet’s nest of controversy, but for those who are looking to have themselves or their child fully functioning w/ the least amount of hassle in the “hearing world” (and are serverly hearing inconvenienced), I can’t say enough good things about the implant. I’m sure it’s not for everybody, but those for whom it fits the technology has come a long, long, long way from the early days.

Cheers!

becca, I, too, would like my President to understand what the hell is going on around him. Unfortunately, we’ll have to wait about a year and a half or so before our next chance of that happening.

No offense taken. I just wanted to clarify that hearing impairment doesn’t equate with incapability.

As a side note, I prefer my own term over labels like “disabled,” “challenged,” and “impaired”: inconvenienced. To me, this word best describes my own personal day to day experiences.

That said, I agree that it appears that Mr. Thompson was *conveniently* relying on his own *inconvenience* to justify a remark that he was later called on.

BTW: I hope the cochlear implant works well for your brother in law. I looked into it myself, but I haven’t yet fried out enough of my inner ear cilia to require going that route.

- My brother-in-law is profoundly hearing impaired and has moved from a hearing aid to a cochlear implant over the years I’ve known him so I have certainly had experiences with the confusion that can come with not quite hearing things correctly. Lord knows, most of us have had those experiences even without the help of hearing aids (a surreal conversation on a first date where I thought the guy told me he was studying to be a ‘mortician’ instead of an ‘optician’ comes to mind).

I certainly didn’t mean to sound like i was making fun of hearing aids or to say that folks with them shouldn’t be in roles like that (i’m sure a good percentage of our congress probably already has them). It was more the context of the quote I was hearing. The way that he was blaming it on that (and the flu and bronchitis and having to go to the bathroom) just struck me as off, especially since his answer doesn’t really seem that different even if the question had been what he says he had thought it was. And it made me wonder whether he would ask for something to be repeated if he didn’t quite hear it in other matters of state.

:-) B (&B)

P.S.: Are you the basis for the Siobhan character on Mick LaSalle’s on-line satire, “The Event”?

As a hearing aid user, I have to say that there are times when I’ve sparked hilarious and/or frightening results while responding to a mis-heard statement.

The difference is, there is usually a similarity of what one thinks one has heard to what was actually said (i.e. codpiece rather that God’s peace - you had to be there).

Also, most hearing aid users will typically (though not always) ask for clarification if we aren’t sure we’ve heard the other person correctly.