Tone deaf?

Reader question:

Please explain “tone deaf” in “His decision is tone deaf, to say the least.”

My comments:

It’s a rough decision, perhaps it was not well thought out. At any rate he, the decision maker, can be accused of being careless or insensitive, insensitive to the consequences and effects “his decision” may have on different people.

Whatever it is, it will not be far off to say he’s not being his most caring and sensitive self when he made the decision, or it would not have been accused of being tone deaf in the first place.

Tone deaf, you see, is originally descriptive of people who cannot distinguish pitches and tones in music. In other words, they’re tune deaf, i.e. unable to recognize the high and lows and the lilts in a song.

Metaphorically speaking, when people (or things, their decisions, comments, etc) are accused of being tone deaf, they’re said to be insensitive in one way or another, lacking empathy.

Let me give you an example, as one ancient Chinese emperor immediately comes to mind. One year when the famine was particularly bad, someone reported to the emperor that tens of thousands of people in the country were starving because of it. To this, the emperor replied casually and apparently innocently too: “Why don’t they eat meat soup?”

Why don’t they all eat meat soup, that is, like I do?

Obviously, this emperor had little understanding and no empathy whatsoever for his fellow human beings in the countryside.

I am sorry. That’s insensitivity on my part. In this country, people in positions of power have never been known for having empathy for the lowly and disadvantaged. So, it is wrong for me to put the emperor and his fellow human beings in the same sentence. The emperor has, or at least had, no fellow human beings to speak of. My bad.

Anyways, you get the point.

All right, here are recent examples of people who are tone deaf, insensitive and unable to understand the subtleties and nuances involved in a certain situation:

1. Vice President Joe Biden said Bank of America Corp. and other financial institutions are “tone deaf” for planning new debit-card fees on consumers.

Biden, answering questions at a forum in Washington, joined with other officials, including President Barack Obama, in criticizing the charges, saying they have provoked an “overwhelming, gut reaction” from the public.

- Biden: Banks ‘Tone Deaf’ for Imposing New Fees, NewsMax.com, October 6, 2011.

2. A proposal for the NDP to steer left has the provincial NDP and their federal counterparts divided. The so-called Leap Manifesto calls for a more environmentally-friendly policy, and an end to fossil fuel use, but it’s one Alberta Premier Rachel Notley is opposed to.

On Saturday, Notley delivered a speech at the federal NDP Convention in Edmonton, appealing to party faithful to not adopt the manifesto, and they are feelings Notley reiterated Monday.

“To be clear, the Government of Alberta repudiates the section of the document that addresses energy infrastructure, those ideas will never form any part of our policy,” Notley said Monday. “They are ill-informed, na?ve and they are tone deaf.”

If it was approved, the manifesto would stop pipelines, and keep oil in the ground – at a time when an increasing number of Albertans in the oil and gas industry are out of work.

“There is 500,000 people that depend on a paycheck from this industry and market access is critically important,” Mark Scholz with the Canadian Association of Oilwell Drilling Contractors said.

Gil McGowan with the Alberta Federation of Labour said he doesn’t think the policy will be adopted, calling it an “unrealistic fantasy”, but he’s concerned political infighting over it could hurt the party in the long term.

“It’s going to be like whack-a-mole, every time the opposition tries to run with this, we’re just going to have to smack it down again by reassuring people that this is not going to happen in Alberta,” McGowan said.

- Na?ve, tone deaf: Premier’s reaction to Leap Manifesto, CTVNews, April 11, 2016.

3. Donald Trump, already embroiled in controversy over his remarks about Muslim Americans, is now drawing fire for saying he would advise his daughter to find a different job if she were sexually harassed by her boss.

The remark, which was immediately criticized as tone-deaf and insensitive to sexual harassment victims, came during an interview with Fox News contributor and USA Today columnist Kirsten Powers published on Monday.

Powers asked the Republican presidential nominee to comment on sexual harassment allegations against Roger Ailes, the former Fox News chief who resigned last month.

“What if someone had treated Ivanka in the way Ailes allegedly behaved?” Powers asked Trump, according to her report. His response: “I would like to think she would find another career or find another company if that was the case.”

Powers called his reply “startling, even by Trumpian standards.”

“[M]ost women don’t have the financial resources of Ivanka,” Powers wrote. “They can’t afford to quit their job without another in hand, something that is impossible to do when you are under contract and forbidden to speak to competitors. Most importantly, why should a woman be expected to upend her career just because she ended up in the crosshairs of some harasser?”

- Donald Trump says he hopes daughter ‘would find another career’ if sexually harassed, CNN.com, August 1, 2016.

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About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：張欣 編輯：丹妮）