As I was riding the bus a few months ago, a mentally handicapped man got on and immediately yelled, “Go Giants!” Well, this was in San Francisco, and it was also after the Giants became World Series champs, but it was also long after they became World Series champs. Needless to say, much chuckling ensued and the results were all captured on my recorder. Occasionally, the man would randomly repeat his exclamation to the further delight of his bystander audience. It seemed like something that might be useful to sample, although I don’t know exactly how I could use it, but it also made me wonder if giving a microphone to people like this is some form of exploitation. Case in point:

Talk about mixed feelings. I remember listening to this stuff years ago and getting a good laugh out of it due to how incredibly ridiculous and awkward it was and I can’t imagine that Chris Burke has been in on the joke. So is Chris Burke being exploited or is he drawing attention to down syndrome? Is this the kind of attention down syndrome needs? Would I simply be mocking a handicapped man by sampling his enthusiam for the Giants? It’s hard to say. It seems like exploitation and promotional education should be on opposite ends of a spectrum but, the more I think about it, the more it seems as though these two interpretations lie on either side of a thin line at the center of a spectrum.