Your thread on the Kennedy Assassination has reached its saturation point and so will close if it hasn't already.

I was surprised that you referred to Mr. Hoffman as a deaf-mute. Deaf-mute is a 19th and early 20th century construct. Most all Deaf people take offense at the inclusion of the word "mute" as 95% of them are not. The remainder probably don't use their voice but only by choice. Deaf speech range from almost normal to barely discernible, but more than likely most hearing people would understand them if they use their voice. Even if Mr. Hoffman was not able to make himself understood, he is not mute. His use of an ASL interpreter was more for his benefit than the other way around.

I know this because I am a profoundly Deaf man. My speech is almost normal which most people think is a slight foreign accent. (I suppose there are some who wish I would shut up.) Most Deaf people get speech therapy starting at a very young age.

Again, the word mute should not be applied when referring to Deaf people.

Thanks for clarification, I always thought the two (deaf-mute) went together.

Good to know.

. . . that's how Hoffman was described (i.e., as a "deaf mute") in Gerald L. Posner's credible and expansive examination of the JFK assassination, "Case Closed: Lee Harvey Oswald and the Assassination of JFK" (1994), in which Posner writes:

"Another major witness to appear years after the assassination is Ed Hoffman, a deaf mute . . . ."

http://books.google.com/books?id=vV29AAAAQBAJ&pg=PT183&lpg=PT183&dq=gerald+posner+case+closed+ed+hoffman&source=bl&ots=uNXel5hfbl&sig=e-SeVguieJYrO6PlZxSZkdDTN3o&hl=en&sa=X&ei=5z-RUvfAH4yfrgGx1YCwDQ&ved=0CDsQ6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=gerald%20posner%20case%20closed%20ed%20hoffman&f=false


Moreover, Vincent Bugliosi, in his more recent (and even more voluminous) work, "Reclaiming History: The Assassination of President John F. Kennedy" (2007), similarly notes:

"One of the Dealey Plaza witnesses whom conspiracy theorists have dearly embraced . . . as an important rebuttal to the Warren Commission that no shots came from the grassy knoll is Virgil 'Ed' Hoffman, a deaf-mute. Conspiracy theorist Jim Marrs, in his book, 'Crossfire,' says, 'It is [a] strange irony that the one person who apparently witnessed men with guns behind the wooden picket fence on the grassy knoll at the time of the Kennedy assassination was unable to tell anyone what he saw. Virgil Hoffman of Dallas has been deaf since birth and, as is common with that disability, he cannot speak.' Hoffman could make sounds, but nothing that was comprehensible to a third party. . . .

"The FBI told [Jim] Dowdy [Hoffman's supervisor at Texas Instruments in Dallas] that Hoffman, being a deaf-mute, should put in writing everything he saw on that day. . . .

"Because he [Hoffman] did not read lips and was only semi-literate in reading and writing, he had a difficult time communicating with the [FBI] agents [at the Dallas FBI Headquarters] , , , The FBI report says, 'Hoffman made hand motions indicating that one of the men dissembled the rifle [behind the fence on the 'grassy knoll' where some claimed a gunman fired at Kennedy] and placed it in a suitcase.'" (pp. 873-74)
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As a personal observation, I stood next to Hoffman in the downtown Dallas Dealey Plaza area, October 1992, watching and listening to him as he was relating what he said he saw on the day of Kennedy's murder. He relied heavily on sign language and his actual speech (if it could be described as such) was far from normal, being, as I recall, essentially unintelligible.



Edited 25 time(s). Last edit at 11/23/2013 10:21PM by steve benson.