Deafness, symbolic and non-

In 1950, Robert Moses’s lieutenants began to notice that the boss was going deaf. From From Robert Caro’s The Power Broker: Robert Moses and the Fall of New York (1974):

In a way, of course, Moses’ deafness was symbolic. He had, in a way, been deaf all his life — unwilling to listen to anyone, public, Mayor, Governor, deaf to all opinion save his own. But this new, physical deafness contributed in a nonsymbolic, very real way to his divorce from reality. As always, he would not attend public hearings or in any other way place himself in a situation in which he could hear the public’s views. His insulation inside a circle of men who would offer no views that were not echoes of his own further insured that no outside voices would become a part of his considerations. Now, thanks to the deafness, he was unable to hear the views, get the thinking of those administrators and public officials who were invited to lunch with him or who sat with him in conferences. Surrounded by men who would not give him the new facts and figures he needed, with no time left to rethink solutions to changing problems — most important, with no feeling that there was any reason for him to rethink — the deafness made it impossible for him to learn about the new realities even if he had wanted to.

The proof is a statement he made about golf. If there was any area in which the Robert Moses of the 1920’s had been truly expert it was in the area of recreation, in the active games which adults liked to play. But now he mentioned offhandedly that golf was not a game in which the masses were interested; it was, he said, played only by the “privileged few.” Golf was now a game played by millions in all walks of life. But Moses didn’t know this. His statement would have been true in the Twenties and he thought it was still true in the Fifties.

Because he didn’t know anything had changed.

Related reading
All OCA Robert Caro posts (Raindrop.io)