Here's Your Sign....Language

Whenever there is a debate or high-profile speech or press conference, there is always a sign language person (sign languagist? signist? signer?) near the podium translating for the deaf.  Let me start off the bat by saying that if I was deaf, it would be super great to have that translator and it is a nice thing to do for that segment of the population.  That said, how many deaf people are there in the United States?  One million apparently.  And half of those are over 65.  There are 314 million people in the US, so that means that someone is paying someone to sign every political speech and debate to cater to .003% of America.  Why are we so interested in appeasing them?  Were there a lot of deaf protests at one point to cause this upheaval?  At this point, would taking away the sign language artist (nailed it) move the needle even a little?  If we are going to keep this tradition up, should we not also translate into languages for people in America who don't speak English?  A lot of Americans speak Spanish (37.6% of people) and even if a third of those can't speak English which is well over the .003% of the population, way more than of them than there are deaf people.  Based on that one third rule, we could also translate speeches into Chinese, Hindu, French, Tagalog, Vietnamese, German, and Korean.  Korean is the lowest percentage of America out of those at 1.1%.  That means if all political speeches have a Korean translator it would be helpful to three times as many Americans than having a sign language translator.  Let's save the tax payers some money (you know that has to be how they get paid) and cut this non-essential position.

"This is what we are paying for."