i think their point is not his right to say it, but it's more about him getting paid by these sponsors to say it. well, that and they think he's simply wrong.
i think he's wrong but would never call for his firing. that is why God made little knobs on radios that change stations.
I don’t know what exactly he said, but there’s been a lot of intelligent commentary in the past year or so, about the increasing practice of diagnosing kids as being “on the autistic spectrum” (also called “pervasive developmental disorder”), resulting a huge number of kids being labelled “autistic” who certainly wouldn’t have been given that label 20 years ago. Now a large majority of kids with this diagnosis and it’s shortened label are kids who wouldn’t have been called “autistic” in the past. While the majority certainly do have some genetic/physiological disorder, it’s entirely possible that some of the ones on the very mild end of the “spectrum” are indeed kids whose parents’ permissiveness and other poor parenting practices fully account for the child’s symptoms.
I also suspect that some of these kids would instead be labelled “ADHD” if the diagnosis happened to be made by a doctor who prefers that label. Both groups of labelled kids surely include a lot who simply don’t care to sit still through hours of academic-oriented preschool classes, or to follow orders through hours of “enrichment” activities their parents drag them to (musical instrument lessons, foreign language lessons, regimented sports instruction, etc).