Exactly right. All he has is his schtick, and I find it nauseating.
Posted on 07/26/2008 12:06:03 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Last week, radio talk-show host Michael Savage talked about autism:
I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, `Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.” I’m not an impartial observer here. My six-year-old son has high-functioning autism. He is exactly the kind of kid that Savage attacked.
Savage’s comments were wrong and harmful. Some autistic kids do learn to read and speak, which is why misinformed people may think that they are not “genuinely handicapped.” Yes, they are. Autism is a brain disorder that affects everything from social communication to physical coordination. Autistic people have multiple problems that make it hard for them to do things that the rest of us take for granted. It may take them years to learn how to toss a ball or nod their head.
And even when they can talk, they often have odd speech patterns that instantly mark them as autistic. Other kids taunt them with the very words that Savage used. If they respond verbally, their speech problems will draw even more taunting. If they respond with their fists, they run the risk that authorities will label them as “violent.”
Once in a while, parents take the approach that Savage recommends. It never works. Screaming insults at a handicapped kid is not child-rearing. It’s child abuse.
Conservatives need to speak out against Savage. Many news stories label him as “conservative” or “right-wing,” which may prompt some people to think that we agree with him. Savage has a long history of disgusting comments, which has led David Klinghoffer to speculate that his act is a giant liberal put-on, a “lefty’s cartoon mental picture of a ranting right-wing caveman.”
The liberal website Media Matters has spearheaded the backlash against Savage’s autism comments. Understandably, conservatives might be uneasy about siding with such an outfit. Savage has tried to exploit such feelings by casting his critics as PC leftists. But just because the folks at Media Matters oppose child abuse, it doesn’t follow that we conservatives should accept it just for the sake of disagreeing with them.
Besides, liberals do not have a corner on concern for autism. California’s 1969 Lanterman Act was a landmark in serving people with autism and other disabilities. Its sponsor was a Republican, as was the governor who signed it: Ronald Reagan. In 2006, President Bush signed the Combating Autism Act. Its author was Senator Rick Santorum (R., PA).
Savage has cited respectable commentators who suggest that many kids with the autistic label are merely late talkers. His defense fails on two counts. First, these commentators don’t speak in the hateful language that he has used. Second, although they make their argument in good faith, they get things backward.
When you first notice that your child has a speech delay — around his second birthday — autism is the last thing that you want to think about. Autism is devastating and frightening. It’s more comforting to think that your kid is just starting late and will catch up soon. Clutching the “late talker” security blanket, some parents wait months or years before admitting the possibility of autism.
At that point, they may indeed conclude that a formal diagnosis could be important in getting help. States and school districts often pay for the assessment. Every autism diagnosis means thousands of dollars for services that the federal government mandates but does not fully subsidize. With tight budgets, the authorities have no incentive to encourage overdiagnosis. Once in a while, a child may incorrectly get the autism label, but underdiagnosis is probably a much bigger problem.
We need more study of the causes and prevalence of autism. At the moment, though, the issue is Michael Savage’s attack. He has since claimed that he is a nice guy who wants help to go to those who truly need it. Nonsense. If he cared about autistic kids, he wouldn’t have spewed words such as “moron” and “idiot.”
And he shouldn’t claim to be a conservative. He has cheapened political discourse and hurt defenseless children. There’s nothing conservative about that.
—- John J. Pitney Jr. is the Roy P. Crocker Professor of Government at Claremont McKenna College.
Do not confuse being a geek with being REALLY autistic. They are VERY DIFFERENT. Learn about the disorder called autism first ( I suggest you start by actually talk to loving parents with autistic children) before making this statement
Comment:
These kinds of threads about Autism are disappointing.
It gives the Kook Fringe posters an opportunity to show their ass and lack of intelligence about Autism.
Autistic kids are easy prey for vicious folks ignorant of what Autism is all about.
stevem wrote:
Savage’s comments were wrong and harmful.
Only for any poor soul who takes Savage seriously, as if he has anything to add to the discussion.
I’ve known a couple of autistic kids. One was(is) much older than 2 or 3. To suggest that expenditure of a life is an act...well, you would need to be as goofy as Savage make such a connection.
Still, I doubt Savage believes it. Heck’s bells, there was a time some years ago when I listened to Savage because I thought he actually made a scintilla of sense. Then, after the fifth or sixth time he spun into some tangential rant about some bark at the moon, I realized he sells his wares as do professional wrestlers.
Now, I used to enjoy professional wrestling. To this day I think the best of the wrestlers of those days took seriously their duty to be entertainers, salesmen. The marginal wrestlers did little except provide a supporting cast. If Savage took his audience seriously, he might improve at least to the level of supporting cast. After all this time, though, I don’t really expect it.
Comment:
Excellent comment.
If we allowed the purveyors of perpetual victimhood free reign, nobody would be “normal”, every last person would have some “condition” attached. “Subclinical” this, “asymptomatic” that, “high functioning”, “spectrum disorders”, etc etc etc. Legitimate terms, warped beyond any rational medical meaning, are used to feed a spectrum of interests (pharmaceuticals, adult babysitters therapists, folks who just want more handouts, crappy parents looking to shift the blame).
When I was a kid, words like awkward, shy, and withdrawn, or energetic, loud, and troublemaker, were used to describe children now “diagnosed” with autism or ADHD. The supposedly blighted children (by today's standards) are all normal functioning adults today. Hell, I probably would have been labeled autistic because I mixed (informal) sign language and English in near equal proportions until age 4. Is that unusual? YES! Is it a medical condition? Of course not.
If anything, projecting ones own hypochondria is a mental sickness that needs to be addressed.
Comment:
Little Mickey Savage is dat youse?
I absolutely agree, I think autism much like ADHD is way over diagnosed in this country! Thank you Michael Savage!
Comment:
Interesting..it may explain why a majority of children diagnosed with Autism come from extremely intelligent and mostly conservative parents.
Anybody who yells and curses at listeners has to be mostly retarded.
Part of the problem is assuming that if your child is "different" then he has an illness and needs therapy. If there's a physical ailment such as hearing loss or nerve or neurological damage that's one thing. But if he's just not normal then that's not an illness just a difference.
Comment:
Just reading between the lines of what you wrote, you are probably a very good orderly.
I am admittedly very biased against SSRIs and SNRIs due to personal family experience and copious amounts of subsequent research done into the subject.
My oldest daughter probably has aspergers; the reason I say probably is because we haven't yet had her "officially" diagnosed, one of the main reasons being that I am pretty sure they'll want to give her an SSRI, not necessarily because she really needs one, but because these days they hand them out like candy (highest prescribed class of drugs in the US), which of course is much easier than teaching parents and child how to deal with the idiosyncrasies of the individual. Sorry, but no doctor is going to drug my child.
Are there true autistics? Absolutely! But these behavioral drugs are legally being pushed on the western world and I'm afraid that one day down the road we might find that this huge pharmaceutical cash cow was just bad medicine.
ok..let’s try another tack... you mentioned mentally retarded kids.. yes its sad, BUT I’ve worked with enough of them to know they aren’t angels.. and they KNOW exactly what they’re doing.. especially when the 12 year old boys make lewd suggestions to the teachers.. because if the teacher reacts in a shocked manner, they whoop it up... many children with real disorders get a pass by their parents in the behaviour department because they feel so bad for the ‘little darlings’.. same goes for autistic children.. most parents get a diagnosis and any discipline goes right out the window. So it may be a real disorder, but it doesn’t mean the kids should never be disciplined.. don’t think they don’t understand right from wrong.
I support Savage’s right to say any damned dumb thing.
i agree with you there.
I guess orderlies need 8 years of Higher education now!!!
"I can only imagine if some of the worlds most productive and smartest people had been told they were not normal and began medication to suppress the undesired ‘condition’."
Yes, that is interesting and it is one of the points Savage was making and has made for years, I've heard it expressed regularly over the years: It's a good thing for us that they were not forced to begin medication. Another group he talks about are just plain disruptive children being misdiagnosed.
I heard the broadcast and I've heard him speak on this subject several times over the years. It is what he's talking about; to wit, the effects of misdiagnoses either because of lack of knowledge or on purpose. It is that group that was the subject of his tirade and always has been over the years.
I loved reading your post, thank you.
YES, government schools, state entities, lawyers, and the entire Autism Cottage Industry are profiting. And some of that is DEAD wrong. There is very little to be done for high-functioning autism, and the best things that can be done, can be done for free (or the cost of a parent’s full time duty).
But autism is very real, and probably caused by more than only genetics. There is SOMETHING different in our nutrition, environment, vaccines, that is acting as a neurotoxin to our children. Autism is NOT the only epidemic hitting us. Many auto-immune chronic conditions are also more prevalent and deadly than before — asthma, just to name one.
Autistic kids might be the canaries in the coal mine for the health of our nervous systems (including our brains).
Autism is very serious and families dealing with it need empathy and moral support, not accusations of bad parenting.
Comment:
Excellent comments worth repeating.
As I posted earlier I am very disappointed with some of my fellow FReeper comments concerning morons, retards and spastics.
It would be nice if Autism was a disease that infected only Liberal radical Democrats but that just isn't so.
As Michael Whiner aka Savage is heaping crap on Conservatives once again some are posting a horrible defense of what he said.
I am the parent of an Autistic child and have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars out of pocket trying to prove all the other professional diagnoses was wrong.
Truth is about the only cure I know of right know is prayer.
Exactly right. All he has is his schtick, and I find it nauseating.
If they were conservative, they would depend on family,
friends or church to help instead of tax money for their
problem.
Comment:
LOL What Bull Shiite.
This conservative will take help from wherever he can get it and be thankful it is there to be had.
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