WRFH/Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM - The Social Mediators: Helen Keller was real.

Episode Date: February 16, 2024

This week we discuss Helen Keller and the internet's weird obsession with insisting that she is "not real." Tune in this week to get set straight if you think that, hear about how she was able to achieve what she did, and some of the internet discourse that makes Jillian and Garrett sad to be apart of Gen Z. 

This is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale 101.7 FM where we examine the truth disparity between what's on social media and what's actually true. My name's Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Gouldsby. And this week we are talking about the one, the only, Helen Keller. Ooh. Is she real? She's contentious on the internet. We'll get into that in a second. I do want to give Garrett some exciting news. Okay, I'm ready. He doesn't know because he doesn't have social media.

But this is just exciting news to me because I was scrolling through TikTok as one does during my lunch hour. And I came across a TikTok that had like a million likes of this girl being like, if you don't know what to join in college as an activity, join college radio. It's awesome. And all these comments were like, I've always wanted to join the radio. And it just made me really happy because I was like, I do college radio. We do that. We do that.

And we have an awesome show and we have lots of fun. We're not, we don't do in-person college radio this semester, but it is, it's making the rounds and it's making waves. Crazy. So get excited about that, Garrett. I am excited. People know about the radio and they're pumped. And they're going to start listening to our show and we're going to get famous. I don't really know if there's correlation there between those things.

There definitely is. Do you want me to make a TikTok about having college? It will get millions of likes. Okay, cool. I'll do that before our next episode and I'll let you know how it goes if it gets 12 likes, which is my typical. typical range of like well that's not too too bad that's 12 more people then those 12 people can tell their 12 friends and then before you know it we have a lot of people wow so basically gary thinks we're going to be famous by next week it won't take long but fame isn't all that it's cut out

to be womp womp wombs sad because it worked out for helen color i was just about say it did not work out for helen keller i feel like she's famous but people are being mean to her online and Here's what I will say about this is I was kind of shocked when you mentioned that you may or may not believe that Helen Keller was real because I thought that this was discourse limited only to social media. Well, Because I should probably preface this with a story. I had never had a reason to doubt Helen Keller in my life until one day a dear friend of mine who I will not name for the very slight but still possible chance that he listens to the show. He's a big conspiracy theorist And he came to me one day

And he just looked me dead in the eyes And he said, Garrett There's just no way Helen Keller was actually blind and deaf And wrote all those books And talked to all those people And I was like, you know That is a thing to be curious about

Did that person have social media? Yes I did not give it a second thought after that Okay, then that makes sense That was three years ago I think this is I think that this was a conversation that was popularized and circulated by people on social media. I do have a theory about why, but we'll get to that near the end of my little spiel.

Fun. But I truly believe that this did start on social media because I think I and, well, you and I both grew up in school where you just learned about Helen Keller and learned that she was somebody who was disabled who overcame great obstacles and did incredible things. And that's what you learn. And you go, wow, that's so awesome. And Annie Sullivan was this wonderful woman that helped her through all of it. That's so cool. And then that's the end of it. And then you don't really ever learn about her past elementary school.

You just kind of move on and learn about different things. But for the first time ever, I like you, was had to be confronted with the fact that maybe she isn't all she's, I guess, cracked up to be. And I'm going to talk to you about a couple of the reasons why people are suspicious. I'm ready. First of all, according to social media only, the only source I ever used. obviously because that's the premise of the show is that she published 12 books she was real good friends with mark twain she received the presidential medal of freedom and she flew a plane she was also a public speaker despite not being able to see or hear um which i'll get to public speaking in a

little bit there is a very vehement side of ticot and instagram and twitter that is basically it's from a nuanced conversation about like wow it's really insane that she'd be able to do all this to are we sure that this is like completely what we're being told to she's not real it's devolved into she's not a real person she's a government bot she didn't exist which is not what most thinking people are saying when they bring up this more conspiratorial theory most people when they're bringing it up are saying either a that she was not fully blind was not fully deaf that she like had more of her senses then were led to believe or B, her translator Annie Sullivan was lying and that it was just this big stunt that she would go

around yeah that she would go around the country and deliver speeches because I did actually watch a video of her giving a speech by the way and I mean as you might expect it's it's a little bit incoherent of her talking and then Annie Sullivan comes in and translates what she just said because they were like really good friends and they what do they call her her companion, which is kind of cute. Companion teacher. They're really good companions. And so she would translate for the people in the room what she had just said.

So people think that that was just a big hoax. It was a big lie. These books were not actually written by Helen Keller. And so that's like the real argument that people put forth. But it's actually just devolved into a really sad internet discourse about like this person was blind and deaf. They couldn't have done anything. And you're like, okay, well, you have to use more brain cells than that.

But that's like the main narrative on social media. as if she was a government plant, that she doesn't exist, she's not real, like don't believe her. And then it turns into this, like, because there's no real empathy

or emotions for this person, it devolves into this really nasty debate about, like, I don't know, just being like people who are different than me can't do anything. And it becomes like, I hate her.

I hate her because she does things I can't understand. And that really does. So people are actively anti- High Helen Keller. They're not just saying she's not real. She didn't do this thing.

They actually have animosity toward her. Yes, it's mean. It's like she's different than me. So she must not exist and I hate her. And it's, that's a little bit more of what you see. And there's a lot of videos of people talking about that.

And it gets a lot of buzz because it's a lot of people in the comments being like, ha ha ha ha ha, right? She can't fly a plane. And I will say that is the crux of most people's argument. It's like, she can't fly a plane. She's blind and deaf. Oh, everything she did must be a lie

because she can't fly a plane. But by doing 0.2 more seconds of searching through comments, there are people that are actively working to combat that by being like, she didn't take off, she didn't land, she didn't steer, she actually just held onto the wheel for like 10 minutes. Yes.

So by all technicalities, she flew a plane, but they used to do that for, like, kids back in the day, pre, like, 9-11, I'm pretty sure. They used to, like, let kids hold onto the wheel for, like, 10 minutes if they paid, whatever, to like quote unquote pilot plane. So that's like not an absurd claim, but people just hear,

she flew a plane and go, well, I couldn't do that and I can see in here. So she must not have been able to do it. It must be a big lie. The other frustrating thing about social media before I turn it over to you to kind of clear up some stuff is that there's, like, all of the comments are asking genuinely. And this is where I will need you to fill in with genuine curiosity. Okay, if she did these things, how did she do them? and then everybody just coming back at them and being like Google's free look at her Wikipedia page go watch a movie go read a book and it's just like go somewhere else and nobody takes the time

to sit down and actually explain to people what happened I think I have an idea of how she was able to do these things because I like watched an episode of TV once that I explained it but I would love to hear what you think because truly if I was scrolling through social media I would and I didn't have any prior knowledge I would have no idea because I would have no idea because I would love to hear what you think Because there is nobody helpful. Everyone is saying, go figure it out or it's not possible. There's not, like, I was not able to find anybody who would sit down and just, like, type out a couple of sentences about what was going on.

So maybe it's too complicated. Kind of, but I'm surprised. It makes sense that there's, like, an internet phenomenon of just, like, that's completely reductive for something that nobody will sit down to explain. Because people are not willing to go past social media to look for more information, which just literally the point of this show. But people are more interested in just, like, getting a really quick comment or a tweet or a 15-second video that explains everything so they don't have to think.

They're really unwilling to read a whole book or to watch a whole movie or whatever it is. And so what has become is, oh, she's not real because I can't figure this out quickly on social media. And so I think that's lame. And I think the internet discourse is actually really disappointing. There's also people that take it the complete opposite way where it's, like, berating people. online being like you're totally ablest and there's probably actually some merit to being like it's ablest to say that people who can't

do the things that you do are like not able to do anything you know what I mean there is probably some merit to that but there's also just like a sensitive sort of reactionary thing which makes sense but it is more reactionary between like oh this person said they don't believe that Helen Keller did these things you're

abelist and you're a bad person and I hate you like it is still that same like sort of outrage I hate you because we are an able to to actually have a dialogue on social media, especially not about Helen Keller for some reason. So I'd love to hear what you found, how she did any of these things, because I have an idea, but it's not from social media.

That's for certain. Before we get into your explanation, Garrett, this is the social mediators on Radio Free Hillsdale, 11.7 FM. I'm Julian Parks. And I'm Garrett Goulsby. And we're currently talking about Helen Keller. Yeah, okay. Well, we'll start at the very beginning of Helen Keller, 1880, June 27th.

Tuscumbia, Alabama. Sounds like a lovely place. I've never been there, but that's where she was born. She got sick with scarlet fever when she was 19 months old, and that's how she became blind and deaf. The illness often causes side effects like that, super severe illness. And she began being taught by Anne Sullivan. She was a, and is a teacher at the Perkins Institute for the Blind in Boston.

And she remained with Helen Keller until the day that Anne Sullivan died. So almost 50 years. She died in October 1936. So they were like best buds for a long time. A fun fact. I think this is an important detail because I think the question people would look at Helen Keller's story and say, why don't we have more examples of blind and deaf people doing things like this? Why was she specifically able to do this and not others?

There are a few things that were kind of in her favor to allow her to achieve perhaps a bit more than what we typically hear for people that have these disabilities. she had the fortune of being examined by Alexander Graham Bell, who for those of you don't know, was the inventor of the telephone, but he also worked with deaf people a lot. And her parents sought him out because they had heard that he had had success helping children with these severe disabilities learn to read and write. So when Helen Keller was a small child, she was super unruly, super poorly behaved. and her parents thought that an education might help her with that.

And they sought out Alexander Graham Bell because he was a guy that knew at least a little bit about how to teach kids, how to teach kids with this kind of disability, how to read and write. So between the teamwork of Alexander Graham Bell and Anne Sullivan, they developed a method that Anne Sullivan used to teach her how to spell. It was very interesting. I also think that one of the only reasons that perhaps she, was able to do this to such great proficiency is there's evidence to suggest that she was super bright even before she became deaf and blind. She started speaking when she was about six months old, which is very young.

That's like three to six months early. So basically the way they taught her to spell, and this is, it's wild when you think about it, but kids' brains are incredible at being able to pick stuff up. So Anne Sullivan would put the object in her hand and would allow her. would allow Helen Keller to feel it. And then she would trace the shapes of the letters on Helen Keller's hand. So for water, they would go out to the water pump and Anne Sullivan would pump water over Helen Keller's hand. And then she would spell out water by tracing the letters on her palm. And over time, she got to understand what the shape of each letter was. And then they graduated to

pre-cut out letters, so like cardboard letters that she would have all of them arranged. in a wooden frame and she could feel them and feel their shape and put them in the order she wanted to form words. So that's how she learned to spell and how she learned to start putting sentences together. And by the time she was 10, she was learning to read lips by putting her fingers on the speaker's lips and throat while they were talking and while they were spelling out whatever they were saying. And as crazy as it sounds, it can be done. It's especially, you know, know people people look at this and say well i could never learn how to do that is that yeah because you're an adult kids can learn how to do things that adults just can't learn how to do if you were

you know five years old when you started doing this kind of thing you'd probably be able to do it by the time you were 10 15 years old it's also not unfathomable unfathomable to me because even just learning the alphabet with my sight and my my hearing like it's repetition that is what teaches it to you. It's like being exposed to it over and over and over and over again. And that's what she was doing, right? She was just like repeatedly being exposed to these same letters and these same shapes that they like became meaningful to her. Is that true?

Yes, that's true. Actually, she was exposed to them to an even greater extent than a kid learning the alphabet in a normal school would. Because Anne Sullivan lived with them and it came to a point where Anne believed that it would be more advantageous for Helen's education for them to be separate from her family. So they actually just lived together and did this practice of feeling, feeling things and spelling like all day, every day for years. And that's how she developed these language skills. So she goes on to have like remarkable academic success. She graduated cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1904 and she began to write books about blindness, which was a really big deal at the time because blindness was sort of a taboo subject. a lot of times blindness was caused by STDs.

And so people didn't talk about it. They didn't write about it. They kind of just assumed it was this like, okay, you're blind. So something bad has happened there. Right. Holy cow. Which is not true. And so anyway, Helen Keller is this pioneer of a blind person writing about her experience

and helping other blind people and deaf people get noticed and get the help that they need and things like that. So like you said, she wrote many, many books. And she began to lecture. How did she write books? Do you know? Yeah, Braille. So when she got to college, she learned how to read braille. And there's a method for essentially, yeah, composing, composing sentences via braille.

Yeah, that's what she did. And those other blind authors, no? Yes, there are. So that would, that makes sense that she could write books, that there are people who do that. Yes. She would be considered, I think, one of the first of any acclaim. That's why she's such a big deal. She sort of paved the way for people with a blindness or deafness, let alone both, to do these kinds of things.

That's why she's such an interesting figure. She also raised a ton of money for the American Foundation of the Blind. So she started to travel the country in 1913, and she would lecture, like you said, using an interpreter. It was typically Aunt Sullivan, right? They had this just amazing connection. be a ability to communicate with each other. And so that's how she lectured. And she raised a ton of awareness for the issues that she faced and that many other

disabled people faced. And she actually co-founded the American Civil Liberties Union in 1920. Not a lot of people know that, but she was a co-founder of the ACLU. And, yeah, played a major role in the improvement of the lives of death and blind people in the U.S. I'm curious what you would say to the accusation that she was, was fake, like that her interpreters, her interpreter, her family, whatever, saw that she was, like, able to make a lot of money off of this and capitalized on it. And like a key piece of evidence

that I actually, unfortunately, learned from scrolling through TikTok and from a clip of a Michael Knowles podcast. Oh, my. So he's on team. Helen Keller's not real, unfortunately. And he said that the reason he thinks that is because she only flew planes and, and he's not real. And he's not real. And he said that, and wrote books while her interpreter was alive. And when Anne Sullivan died, or Annie Sullivan, I don't know, I've heard both, that she just stopped doing all that. And to me, that just sounds like grief. That sounds like she has this companion and then no longer does she want to do these things

because that's the person she used to do it with. But they say that it's pretty clear evidence that she wasn't able to do it without her. So I'm curious what you think on that. Yeah, I, you know, I don't know. I don't know that that theory has any grounds. First of all being that she did get other help after. So it wasn't, you know, she had somebody else come help her not too long after Anne Sullivan died.

But she did go through a pretty serious period of grieving because they were so close. I mean, talk about somebody you're with for 50 years, basically without separation. And, you know, it's also, I think important to note that by the time Ann Sullivan passed, It's not like Helen Keller was young and still had a ton of, you know, a ton of career left. She was in her, you know, in her 50s or 60s. So, yeah, it's not super surprising that her productivity, quote, unquote, became less. And I also think that that's not necessarily a fair characterization either because she continued to do activist work after Anne Sullivan passed away. Yeah.

I think there was, there was probably always difficulty in her life in communicating with other people. people without and because, you know, when you have developed a relationship with somebody and a way of communicating for so long, getting somebody else that hasn't gone through all of that with you into the mix to try to help you, you know, interpret your thoughts, that's a pretty heavy ask, you know, but to think that they were in it for the money is pretty, is pretty ludicrous, specifically considering that all of her work had to do with advocating for blind people. And it didn't personally enrich her. It personally enriched foundations that,

that were associated with the blind. I mean, she did well for herself, but it wasn't like she was swimming in money. And also, there's no way that her family or anybody could have known that she was going to make any money doing this. Like I said, it was a, this was a taboo subject. When she was in high school, even in college, no one would have thought that it would have even been okay for her to write all of these books.

Yeah. Yeah. No, that's a good point. Are we ready to give it a grade, Garrett? I think so. Okay, yeah. Well, okay, are we grading how much social media told me about Helen Keller or the general discourse surrounding her? Let's grade the discourse.

I'm feeling salty. Okay, ready. Yeah, me too. Three, two, one. F. Bad. Come on, social media. It's the worst.

I honestly think social media is the origin of this conspiracy theory anyway. I think it is. It's boring. It's tired. Grow up. She was, I don't know, I wish we could all just revert to elementary school, us that said, woohoo, Helen Keller's awesome. Because like, what is the benefit in being like, no, she didn't do it because she's blind and deaf?

Like, what is the benefit in that? People don't want to believe that somebody that's blind and deaf could do things that they couldn't do. I know. Like, why is that, like, why is that at all helpful society? I'd rather, even if it is a lie, I'd rather believe it. And that's how I feel. And that's how I feel strongly. Do you agree?

I think so. Okay, perfect. Glad we're on the same page. So you heard it here first folks Me and Garrett are in agreement That or the social mediators actually Endorse Helen Keller Am I allowed to say that? I think you are

Are we in trouble for? No I don't think so I think she's in public domain At this point Okay I hope you're right on that one okay cool Thanks so much for tuning into the social mediators We'll catch you next week