John Travolta and Dyslexia

So, last night was the Oscars, in which I was unusually interested, having seen many of the films which were nominated for various things. Gravity was one of those films, and it was a bit weird that it ran the tables, basically, at the various behind-the-scenes type awards, film editing and such, but didn't win Best Picture. But hey, 12 Years a Slave might be really good, I haven't seen it so I can't really object. I was, however, very pleased that Frozen, which I just saw a week or so ago, won both of its categories, Best Animated (Feature-Length) Film and Best Original Song for "Let It Go." Since "Let It Go" was nominated in that category, it, like each of the nominees, was performed live during the ceremony, by the person who sings it in the movie, which in its case is Idina Menzel. Now, y'know, it wasn't the world's best performance or anything, though I still found it cool, but that's not the point.

No, the point is that John Travolta had the job of introducing Idina to sing it, and he, well, botched that job. At the end of his introductory speech, which was about how musical-movies are really cool and in particular their big main-event songs (like "Let It Go"), he was supposed to, y'know, say her name. Except instead of saying "Idina Menzel," he said "Adele Dazeem," or something. It was weird. Of course, well before she had finished singing the song there were Twitter handles for that non-existent person; I particularly like the third entry from @AdeleDazim, "Travolta never bothered me anyway." I'd call that a sick burn except, well, ice and all... You get the idea, the whole internet has been mocking Travolta non-stop for the past twenty or so hours.

The more recent development is that it is claimed that Travolta is dyslexic, and that therefore we're all being terribly mean in laughing at him. Right up front I want to state very clearly that I wholeheartedly and enthusiastically endorse the proposition that one should not laugh at people on account of their learning disabilities. (There might be a kind of forfeiture doctrine involved, where you don't get to make this objection to being mocked if you become President, but even then I kind of felt bad about it, and it's not like we didn't have any other things to criticize and mock.) But I think there are a number of reasons why the dyslexia defense doesn't really work very well here.