Wednesday, 15 December 2010 11:01 am
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deckardcanineI can now determine the most famous person whose speech I've transcribed: Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy of Rhode Island, son of the late Ted Kennedy. Might I say, it wasn't just his position or heritage that let him stand out at the veterans health care roundtable discussion. He had the most impassioned, most opinionated, most vociferous monologue -- the only one to include "Wrong, wrong, wrong!"
Kennedy maintained that TBI and PTSD should be regarded as physiological health problems, partly because mental/behavioral/psychological disorders are stigmatized and not taken as seriously. I'm not quite sold on the idea that physicians should also be trained to deal with these things, but he has a point that the public and even doctors tend not to recognize symptoms that are not as readily visible as a lost limb, and then they tend to see the problems as something the victims could fix on their own. Exacerbating the issue is the military philosophy of being all that you can be rather than just being accepted. It should be clear enough why more veterans, now predominantly on the young side, are getting incarcerated and/or attempting suicide; yet Congress as a whole has not found the answer obvious.
Kennedy's prime metaphor was of the POW. He said that we, the U.S., have taken more U.S. soldiers hostage than the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and it should be in every party's interest to rescue them from "behind enemy lines." If we don't, it's another victory for the terrorists (the literal ones).
If I as a transcriber have one beef with Kennedy, it's that his monologue defies division into paragraphs. Aside from that, he was more or less a treat.
Kennedy maintained that TBI and PTSD should be regarded as physiological health problems, partly because mental/behavioral/psychological disorders are stigmatized and not taken as seriously. I'm not quite sold on the idea that physicians should also be trained to deal with these things, but he has a point that the public and even doctors tend not to recognize symptoms that are not as readily visible as a lost limb, and then they tend to see the problems as something the victims could fix on their own. Exacerbating the issue is the military philosophy of being all that you can be rather than just being accepted. It should be clear enough why more veterans, now predominantly on the young side, are getting incarcerated and/or attempting suicide; yet Congress as a whole has not found the answer obvious.
Kennedy's prime metaphor was of the POW. He said that we, the U.S., have taken more U.S. soldiers hostage than the Taliban and al-Qaeda, and it should be in every party's interest to rescue them from "behind enemy lines." If we don't, it's another victory for the terrorists (the literal ones).
If I as a transcriber have one beef with Kennedy, it's that his monologue defies division into paragraphs. Aside from that, he was more or less a treat.