Not without thinking, Marta, but without thinking of blind people.
>we have had discussions before about how aligning negative
>characteristics with a disability is not accurate or cool. Blind
>people are not ignorant or stupid people who refuse to look at issues.
>
>Marta
And godferbid we should not be cool, eh. The new censorship appeals to the codependent in us all.
Have a listen to Henry Fowler (being, I think, hysterically funny) on metaphor:
--- In all discussion of m. it must be borne in mind that some metaphors are living, i.e., are offered & accepted with a consciousness of their nature as substitutes for their literal equivalents, while others are dead, i.e., have been so often used that speaker & hearer have ceased to be aware that the words used are not literal; but the line of distrinction between the live & the dead is a shifting one, the dead being sometimes liable, under the stimulus of an affinity or a repulsion, to galvanic stirrings indistinguishable from life. Thus, in *The men were sifting meal* we have a literal use of *sift*; in *Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat*, *sift* is a live metaphor; in *the sifting of evidence*, the m. is so familiar that it is about equal chances whether *sifting* or *examination* will be used, & that a sieve is not present to the thought -- unless indeed someone conjurs it up by saying *All the evidence must first be sifted with acid tests*, or *with the microscope* --; under such a stimulus our m. turns out to have been not dead but dormant; the other word, *examine*, will do well enough as an example of the of the real stone-dead m.; the Latin *examino*, being from *examen* the tongue of a balance, meant originally to weigh; but, though weighing is not done with acid tests or microscopes any more than sifting, *examine* gives no convulsive twiches, like *sift*, at finding itself in their company; *examine*, then, is dead m., & *sift* only half dead, or three-quarters. --Dictionary of Modern English Usage ---
The three-quarters-dead metaphor "blind", in Justin's sentence, does not bring the physical handicap to mind, unless indeed someone conjurs it up by making an issue of it.
Shall we not speak of blind alleys, blind dates or blind man's buff, either, for fear of being uncool?
cheers, Joanna S
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