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Contemplate, if you will for a moment, the following list of illustrious persons:
Albrecht Dürer
Buzz Aldrin
Alexander the Great
Queen Victoria
Edward R. Murrow
Lewis Carroll
Michelangelo
Charlemagne
Raphael
James Baldwin
Leonardo da Vinci
Charlie Chaplin
Sir Isaac Newton
And of course me.
What do these paragons have in common? Well before I let the pig out of the poke I should (if only for the sake of all that dramatic tension I'm building) add that it's a characteristic that is also shared by three out of the last four presidents1 ---and of course me.
And as for me, I have from time to time on these air-waves shared with you my lamentations on the great burdens that my life labours under : of being a dwem (a Dead White European Male); of being Ethnodeficient (as an English dwem I of course have no discernible ethnic characteristics); and finally, and worst-ally, of being left handed .
Yes! And now, in a blinding flash of insight, you finally see that that little eclectic list of mine (and of course me) are all members of the sub-species Homo sapiens sinistralis.
And though we make up but a bare tenth of the population at large (or even less during periods when children are tortured out of left-handedness), we left-handers constitute a disproportionally high fraction of its great, its good, or at the very least, its successful.
So why then are we seen in such a bad light? Why are all those terms for left-ness so pejorative? Why gauche? Why maladroit? Why sinister? Why is it ambidextrous not ambisinistrous?
The answer is plain and simple: plain, simple, unadulterated envy---mere jealousy! The right-handed majority, with its lopsided brains and its lack of the left-handers' spark of genius is, in all its boring ho-hummity, just jealous of us. And so it clings in desperation to its awkward scissors and its spiteful can-openers, and it wails its imprecations at us with such (if you'll excuse my ...direct language) dexterity as it can muster.
And it disparages the left not only in matters of the flesh, but even in the political arena. What else could drive the majority to such paroxysms about the 'lefty intellectual elite' but abject jealousy?
Can anything else explain America's constant willful slouching towards the right---a slouchant progression that clearly means that the lack of adequate support for the less fortunate in our society is due entirely to right-handed people's jealousy of the left-handed---and this is desperately ironic when you remember how much less fortunate the right-handed are when compared to the left-handed. Just consider that, for example, in 2006, researchers at Lafayette College and Johns Hopkins Universities found that, for men who attended college, the left-handed are 15 percent richer than the right-handed, and 26 percent richer if they happened to graduate. Or consider the theory of Chris McManus of University College London who argues that left-handed people as a group have historically produced an above-average quota of high achievers. Or consider the fact that there is a tendency for both hemispheres of the brain to be symmetrical in left-handers, but in the right-handed one side of the brain is noticeably smaller. And don't we immediately see what a pathetic and biological cry for help it is that it's the left side that's bigger.
Finally, to clinch all my arguments, for the overwhelming envy and jealousy of the right-handed for the left-handed and for its dire consequences, remember that the current George Bush isn't left-handed!
Cheerio for now
from
Richard Howland-Bolton
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Notes:
Just as a demonstration of how we are discriminated against, compare us with a minority with a similar proportion of the population---blacks (who constitute 14% against the lefties 10%) get whole month to celebrate their history but we get a mere one day . Not only that but every four years they get an extra allotment equal to our entire yearly allowance!
1 Though it's almost absolutely certain that the next one will be, since both of the major candidates lean to the left hand (whatever their political leanings might be).
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