An Open Letter to Dionne Warwick Regarding ‘Celebrity Apprentice’

Dear Dionne,

Normally, I see Celebrity Apprentice as a fun, goofy show featuring celebrities who run around like chickens with their heads cut off. But I have never been so happy to see a person kicked off a reality show as I was when you were fired on this week’s episode. Lots of past contestants have been bitchy, petulant, or hard to work with. But when you told Marlee Matlin last week that deafness was “depressing,” I went from thinking you were a pain in the ass to thinking you were ignorant and hateful.

Marlee Matlin is an Oscar winner, and she just so happens to be hearing impaired. Last week, during a challenge to come up with a concept for a kids’ book, Marlee suggested a book about a little kid who was deaf. You dismissed that idea as “depressing.” I’m incredibly sorry that you find deafness to be depressing. But I have a mother and father who are hearing impaired, and I find deafness to be beautiful. I might spend every day at work writing, but I only truly express myself when I’m communicating in American Sign Language. In fact, a lot of the pride I have in the Deaf community and their identity started when I was a little girl and read a kids’ book about a deaf child. Thanks to that book, I realized that there were lots of other families that used ASL, and that deafness was not weird or something to be ashamed of. Thanks to other books like this one and this one, I learned about Deaf culture, pride, and empowerment. What I didn’t learn about was depression.

Hearing impaired people are unable to listen to your music. I’m able to, but I choose not to, and I never will again.