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So I finally got around to reading Michael Savage on the Autism Controversy after grading papers, going swimming with Charlie and explaining to the water aerobics teacher why the boombox was contributing to him looking mighty distressed and since the class was over maybe it could be turned off?, making Charlie’s lunch, overseeing him practice cello, searching for the Leapster (not necessarily in that order). Yes, I know you’ve all read it, blogged it, rolled your eyes over it, read too many websites inveighing over the mean-spiritedness of remarks. Here’s Savage being called the most hated man in America (what better way to get, if not sympathy, attention?). Here’s AFLAC Just Saying No to advertising on Savage’s show. Here’s Salon on protesting parents and Savage self-defending.
Swimming, searching for lost new toys, folding, making, driving: These activities offer ample time (especially when there’s an overturned tractor trailer on the highway) for reflection, and this part of Savage’s original comments was on my mind:
Now, you want me to tell you my opinion on autism, since I’m not talking about autism? A fraud, a racket. For a long while, we were hearing that every minority child had asthma. Why did they sudden — why was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I’ll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], “When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], ‘I don’t know, the dust got me.’ ” See, everyone had asthma from the minority community. That was number one.
Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? 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.
I was once a minority child with asthma, though I don’t think I’m the kind of “minority” Savage is referring to. And while I would have to, at least in part, agree with him that autism has become something like the “illness du jour”—who doesn’t know about it, or know someone with a child with it, these days?—-I don’t think, or rather I know, that my understanding of autism is not the same as Savage’s. (Well, you knew that already.) Reviewing Savage’s The Autism Controversy comments, his main point (remember, I’m grading papers and I’m in looking-for-thesis statement mode) is that autism is being “overdiagnosed,” that some poor kids are being “falsely diagnosed,” are indeed being “victimized” by being “diagnosed with an ‘illness’ which may not exist, in all cases.” Oh, the poor bamboozled parents thinking their kid has the “disease du jour” and, in truth, in order to figure out what their brat of a kid really has, those parents need only look in the mirror, and see the actual cause of said brattiness in their kids. It’s you, buster, it’s you lazy and lousy parents! You’re doing a rotten job and that is why, ipso facto, you have rotten kids.
Well.
It’s either fascinating, or discouraging, or infuriating to find the “bad parents cause autism”—-the refrigerator mother theory of autism, or “Freudian analysis” according to the Executive Director of Autism United—invoked so baldly today. As Emily pointed out, the savagery of Savage’s remarks seems to be, sadly, reflective of the sentiments of more than a few anonymous commenters about Adam Race and Alex Barton.
Savage’s main point seems to be that kids today are being over/falsely/wrongly diagnosed with autism instead of just getting the “this is some rotten kid” label; he thus suggests that the significant increase in the prevalence rate of autism over the past decade (it’s now 1 in 150)—that the so-called autism epidemic—is because of over-diagnosis and that “99 percent” of autistic kids just aren’t. (They’re just bad.)
One hopes that Savage might, at some time or other (especially as he is, as he noted, the “brother of a severely disabled person who suffered and died in a New York ‘snake-pit’ of a ‘mental hospital’”), get educated about autism, what it is, and why the prevalence rate is up; about why people feel that there’s an “epidemic of autism,” and why the rising prevalence rate is due to the confluence of a number of factors, including the broadening of the DSM criteria for autism, physicians being better able to identify autistic children, parents knowing more about autism, children receiving an autism diagnosis who might before have been given one of mental retardation or something else, a cultural climate in which it’s less of a stigma (unless you listen to Savage’s show) to be disabled.
These and a number of other factors for the so-called autism epidemic are discussed in a July 21st ABC news interview on autism diagnoses skyrocket with Roy Richard Grinker, the author of Unstrange Minds: Remapping the World of Autism. An anthropologist, Professor Grinker also talks about his research on autism in South Korea. When South Korean children are screened for autism using the same diagnostic tools as are now used in the US, the prevalence rate is about the same, 1 in 150.
Professor Grinker also speaks about his teenage daughter Isabel, and about how important it was for him and his wife to turn from focusing so much on what she could not do (as compared to other children) and focused on her strengths.
Focusing on strengths.
Maybe what most infuriates me about Savage’s remarks on autism is that he speaks only of deficits and “kids being bad,” of kids who have problems and who are problems. And, in doing so, he is not able to see where the real problems are, namely, in limited perspectives like his own that see only “the problems” and not the great kids who learn to make their way in a world that, so often, does not want them. That likes to make fun of them.
And if you go to ABC, it’s not this (Savage) video to watch, but this one, about truly understanding autism.
Of course it was dumb of him to say 99 percent, but mild forms of “autism” are definitely overdiagnosed. Socially awkward math whizzes and eccentrics are being told that they’re autistic and socially inferior. I’ll bet some are crying their eyes out. Who would want to be burdened with that? People aren’t going to grow up to be social and professional flops because they were allowed to have their personality quirks. Some kids, yes, are even brats. Maybe your kid means to be disrespectful even if you find that hard to imagine. Look at the messages kids are getting these days, too. It’s implied to them that they’re supposed to be scared of things (and I’m not talking about grave dangers) and told that they’re unable to do things.
No, I’m not some ignorant person. I’ve read both “professional” criteria and anecdotal stuff. I also know about real autism and it does exist. I knew someone with autism and I guess you could call him a friend. He would call me once in a while. I’d see him on the bus occasionally. I saw his impairments that were genuinely autistic. The oldest kid in my son’s preschool class last year also had autism and it was real autism, not social awkwardness, odd nervous habits, or an interest in a particular topic. He would scream and need help to keep it under control. That’s autism. Don’t pick on the very intelligent because they do things differently and you don’t understand it. That doesn’t make them handicapped.
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I can only pray for your children. I worked for 15 years with children with special needs and my hats off to all parents that have to weather the storm daily. This creep is an idiot that has no clue what he is talking about.
Interesting, and I think rather well-written summing up from someone self-identified on the conservative right,
A Savage Attack: Right-radio wrong
National Review Online
Well your answer is facile and based on nothing more than a hunch. If your relative was executed for committing crimes like murder would you get angry and go and commit crimes? or muslim more passionate and/or less disciplined than you?
As for the cause. It goes to the root of the problem. People always want to say it is the circumstances that people find themselves in are the reason for their behavior – (marx,hegel).
This is totally wrong. People’s values are the primary determinant of behavior regardless of circumstance. It is the values that radical muslims hold that asre root of problem. It is the values of the Palestinian people are the problem here.
Look at the Hawaiians. They want their kingdom back. They pursue every non violent avenue open to them. Why?? It is their values. Aloha is a word full meaning and import to them. They are truly a great people. Their values mean more to them than their sovereignty. Once the activist Bumpy kanahele was holed up in cave with a cache of weapons to start violence. The FBI went there. He gave up without violence.
It is poignant that the hawaiian islands are almost the exact opposite of the middle east on the globe. Those islands are imbued with its own spirituality. You have to be open to the beauty of land to see it.
Yeah, that’s logical. Then what will really happen is you’ll just get an angry tide of angry muslims who weren’t radical before but became radical as their relatives and friends are killed in droves and their schools and mosques are destroyed.
That won’t solve a thing. There are more complicated issues that cause terrorism that aren’t even explored by this “solution”. War is so stupid and outmoded.
Is It that appalling?? Islam is part of the judeo-christian tradition. A tradition that at each successive development says their people are god’s chosen. That the wicked ie not them will perish. In the old testament The ancient jews were often told to annihilate a group of people men women children and if they as in one case had mercy on the women and married, were ultimately punished for it.
The Christians have done just as bad in the name of being the chosen ones. There is no “mechanism” by which you make this intelligible to outsiders. The greek tradition you can explain yourself and you had to inorder to be ethical and right. In the judeo-christian it is about faith and convenents with the allmighty. Outsiders are irrelevant. For the ancient jews there was no conversion you were not one of the chosen or you were period. Not one of the chosen? death is ok. I’d say par for the course with savage.
@zeolite
Israel doesnt condone suicide bombings but palestine does. I support Israel end of story.
Also since Islam never took to the greek the way the western world did, the idea of universals and that everybody can be made to understand is not there. They only have judeo-christian of faith and convenents with god. So it is hardly surprising that radical islam calls for death of the unblievers if they dont convert and that is doing the unbeliever a favor. People who should know better continually believe if we could only make them understand that we are the bad guys etc/ *THERE IS NO BASIS OR TRADITION FOR THIS** There is no greek there. They have a convenent with God. They will kill you while you are talking. Our western values dont apply in this world!
The best thing we can do is to kill the radical muslims, burn their schools, books and mosques. It is the only real option for us. I dont want to live in the 11th century. They will not stop they will martyr themselves over and over.
And one could say, “just” appalling.
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Liquid Zeolite: he hates Muslims because he’s an asshole, not because he’s Jewish.
It’s nice to hear that advertisers and stations are taking notice of his vile little hissy fit. It is, OTOH, fairly appalling that he has such an extensive audience.
What was really striking about the whole tirade was the way he advocated talking to children. Any children. Verbal tirades involving the words “idiot” and “moron”? Why didn’t we think of this before?
He mentions that this is the way that his father spoke to him. Yet more proof, in case you needed any, that this particular parenting technique should never be used again.
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Wow. Someone actually did the right thing.
“The radio program of conservative “shock jock” Michael Savage has been canceled by one Mississippi network…
“It was just horrible what he said,” stated Steve Davenport, president of Telesouth Communications, in explaining the cancellation. “When you talk about people in politics, business people, that’s one thing. But when you talk about defenseless children, that’s another.” “