He was interviewed on CBC Radio Canada today. He’s legit.
A secretary simply transcribes what her boss says. A ghost writer takes the subject’s story and puts it into his own words. Quite different.
IMO, the letter (and article) should not have been written in the 1st person and signed by the child with Down Syndrome as if he, personally, authored it. It should have been written in the 3rd person and signed by the father (“father of John Franklin Stephens, a Special Olympics Virginia athlete and Global Messenger who lives in Fairfax, Va.”) OR it should have been signed by the SO athlete, with his father listed as the ghost author directly beneath it.
Otherwise, it is deliberately misleading. Good intentions don’t excuse it.
You should listen to him talk before making up your mind. There is no difference between how he speaks and how he writes.
I looked up one of his interviews.
He sounds really smart, nice and very cool. I like him. I wanted him to have written that article. I don’t think he wrote that article. I do think he gave some key elements, “The developmentally challenged should not be the symbol of what is Slow, Shallow and Stupid” Which is the kind of catchy soundbite some politicians can’t even manage. Legit kudos on that. But when I read the article, there is another level of ability that is demonstrated. It is very hard to put my finger on, but it is just a way that people who don’t have a learning disability are able to write, or even talk, that tells me this was a ghostwritten article. The heart of it is still John’s, and that is cool. But my genuine curiosity wanted to know if it was something that he really did write. And he didn’t. (I mean, in my opinion, it appears he didn’t)
Well, its mostly an ugly joke, not a trans joke, but sorry, objection noted.
It’s not just your opinion. According to Dolores Reborn’s link, he admits he didn’t author the letter without plenty of help from his father. That doesn’t mean that his message is without merit, or that he’s not capable of articulating the pain he felt after reading Coulter’s hateful words. But by claiming sole authorship, he caused people like us to question its authenticity, which ultimately distracted from the message.
Personally, I think that he would have far more impact if he’d just express himself solely in his own words, without any editing. It’s not the eloquence, but the genuine pain behind his words, that makes it impactful.
Just a random observation. There was a guy in a graduate level college statistics class I took once. He sure looked like he had Down’s Syndrome. And his speach was rather odd as well so I do suspect he had some problems. But he was there pluggin away and doing okay I suppose.
Only if you think every autobiography ever written is misleading. Quite a lot of people “write” by having someone else rewrite what they’ve written. It seems odd that you are singling out the kid with Down’s syndrome.
The hard part of writing is not putting something down on the page. It is actually coming up with the idea in the first place. Claiming that the person who came up with the actual idea is not an author insults the creative process, IMHO.
Oh, and by your logic, the fact that you questioned it would also mean that, even if the kid wrote it all by himself, it would have been immoral unless he wrote “And I wrote this all by myself.” People question things. It doesn’t make it wrong or misleading. It just means they’re skeptical.
Have you ever worked clerical? Because this is pretty inaccurate. There are any number of CEOs and mid-level managers who would look pretty damn inarticulate and stupid if they didn’t have their administratives cleaning up their correspondence.
The letter in the OP was a heartfelt and inquiring request. The touch of a spirit of innocents was exposed. Very basic and beautiful. Why are you so MEAN. ?
When I worked as a managing editor of a newspaper, I had interns inflicted on me quite regularly. I usually got their resume beforehand, and in this one instance the resume was absolutely sparkling. Not only was the girl in question a junior at a respected university, she had done tons of community service work for a Downs syndrome outfit, along with other community service.
Imagine my surprise when she turned up and I realized she actually HAD Downs. She wasn’t just doing community service, she was the poster child. Literally.
She was a hard worker and a decent writer. She tended not to do a lot of thinking on her own, but lots of interns went that way. She was actually one of the better spellers of all the interns I had, and I never ran into any problems with fact-checking on anything she wrote. She was no more of a pain in the ass than any other intern, and less than some.
So there are degrees of it, and it sounds like this guy is pretty high functioning.
Just for the record, he’s not a kid. He’s a grown man. I would bet he prefers to be referred to as such.
There is a difference between an editor and a ghostwriter. I have no problem with John having his dad as a ghostwriter because I feel the heart of John’s message still comes through. But let’s not pretend we all don’t know the difference between an editor, dictation taker, secretary or ghostwriter.
Also, for posters explaining about Mosaic Downs, I see your point. In this case, though, I don’t think that’s the explanation. I listened to his interview and I think that although he seems sharp, smart and very cool…he definitely didn’t write that article in the way that anyone means when they say, “That person wrote that article.”
I thought you spelt it ‘potatoe’ in the US…
(Emphasis mine)
Fascinating. I had no idea of this. On the other hand, your friend notwithstanding, wouldn’t a 10% reduction in general cognition be remarkably slight?
As for the linked article, I can readily believe it was written by someone with Down, particularly if he functions at a level which might otherwise be considered borderline handicapped and edges up into “normal”. While he expresses his thoughts well, his writing is not terribly sophisticated, and if not for the subject matter I might think it was written by a middle school student. On the other hand, many non-handicapped people don’t write any better because they attempt to use words and sentence structures they don’t fully grasp.
I can add that fifty years ago, it was common to read that Down Syndrome patients typically had the mental functioning of a five year old child. It may be true of some, but clearly not all.
Generally speaking, however, does Down Syndrome preclude the person being able to write, either physically or mentally? Along with other factors, the upper boundary of cognitive handicap is usually said to be a 70 IQ. Granted, a person with that level of cognition might well have struggled to keep up in school, and possibly never learned to write as such. But would it be impossible for them to learn to write eventually?
These days we have a much better understanding of both the value of early learning intervention, and how to assist the handicapped in learning. The result is a LOT more people with Down’s syndrome are winding up literate and able to function at normal or near-normal levels.
The old definitions saying things like “functions at the level of a five year old” and “70 IQ” are becoming increasingly outmoded. More and more it is apparent that with some intensive early education many (though not all) people with Down’s can function as full adults in society.
Another thing: many people with Down’s have hearing difficulties or other abnormalities that interfere with communication and learning. Something as simple as a good hearing aid can do wonders for some of these people. Part of the prior problems with these people not learning wasn’t the cognitive deficits but something as simply as not being able to hear well, another handicap well known to interfere with learning unless dealt with appropriately.
Bottom line: while not all people with Down’s can learn to read and write a heck of a lot more of them can than used to be thought, and some of them do it quite well.
I’ve made such remarks about Ann Coulter, and I’ve never meant to imply that she is a transperson. I usually mean to imply that she’s either an android designed by an alien spaces who has never seen an actual human female, or the creation of a malevolent deity.
I’m still trying to my mind around Coulter being a person. She’s an embarassment to the human race.
I realize such terminology is at best imprecise, but my intention was to contrast how Down Syndrome is regarded today versus 50 years ago, when it was assumed that these people were pretty much ineducable.
IQ is kind of meaningless, really. I went to school with a girl who had, almost certainly, Fetal Alcohol Syndrome (which hadn’t been thoroughly investigated then, if it was even a thing at the time). By about 9th or 10th grade the school district realized she’d gone as far as she could go and put her in special ed. She had trouble with some things, never got others, but she could write well enough. Not brilliantly, but adequately. She spelled better than some people I know who went to graduate school (although she had a few quirks, for instance she would say “I thought I was post to go…” instead of “I thought I was supposed to go…” and that’s how she wrote it, too).