July 22nd, 2008 by Jemaleddin Cole

So the Inter­net is having another pile-​on. This time, noted cranial-​anal mas­tur­ba­tion afi­cionado Michael Savage (I love that last name - much more macho than his real one: Weiner) has gone on record saying that:

Which is of course, stupid. But unlike the rest of the inter­net, I’m not ter­ri­bly con­cerned. Sure, Mr. Weiner is igno­rant, but igno­rance is easily fixed: I could drop Jared off at his house and have him con­vinced that autism is a seri­ous prob­lem in a half hour. He’d prob­a­bly be pissed that he had to pull his cell phone out of the toilet and expect me to pay to have his walls repainted, but he’d still have learned some­thing from the experience.

And more impor­tantly: Weiner is a troll. He thrives on atten­tion. And the first rule you’re sup­posed to learn on the Inter­net is: don’t feed the trolls. The best way to shut them down is to stop listening.

But sur­pris­ingly, after read­ing many of the reac­tions to his dia­tribe, I find myself agree­ing with part of what he says: I don’t like a lot of the par­ents of autis­tics either.

Oh, I don’t blame them for being bad par­ents. And I don’t think they did any­thing to cause their kids’ autism. But I am sick to death of hear­ing them whine. Let’s have an exam­ple: Steve Young wrote the fol­low­ing over at the Huff­in­g­ton Post:

There’s so much I wanted to say, not only to pound some actual knowl­edge into what­ever [Weiner] uses for a brain, but also to defend those fam­i­lies who have been besieged by the heart­break and hard­ship of living with some­one, espe­cially their chil­dren, with Autism.

I won­dered how [Weiner] might feel if it were his child who was con­stantly being met with dis­ap­prov­ing stares from strangers who rec­om­mend that “if your child can’t behave maybe you shouldn’t take him out in public.” And how he might feel if [he] knew that it is going to happen every single day.

But as I began to write a note to Savage, I real­ized that it would be more appro­pri­ate to have some­one who knows full well the dev­as­ta­tion felt of not only hear­ing the diag­no­sis of your child as autis­tic, but having to live through the day to day sad­ness, frus­tra­tion and pain you feel when it hits you that your child may never have what most would con­sider a typ­i­cal life.

Wow. Once again, we get to hear that the people suf­fer­ing from autism are: the par­ents. It’s heart­break­ing. It’s a hard­ship. They’re con­stantly met with dis­ap­prov­ing stares! And that’s after they’ve been dev­as­tated by find­ing out that their child won’t have a “typical” life! Oh no! The poor dears!

Steve’s son Ryan, the parent of an autis­tic, continues:

What no parent of a spe­cial needs child wants is to be pre-​judged or iso­lated and kept in the shad­ows so that people like you don’t have to look at a child with a disability.

More of the same, eh? (Although he’s admit­tedly less offen­sive than his dad.) Notice that he’s not com­plain­ing about the way people treat his daugh­ter here - he’s upset at how people treat him. Never mind that autis­tics have been lit­er­ally locked away in the shad­ows for most of human his­tory: his metaphor­i­cal pain is the worst kind there is. When his daugh­ter is freak­ing out in a store and so unnerved by her sur­round­ings that all she can do is scream, he’s the one who deserves our sympathy.

This young man is just absolutely pissed that his daugh­ter won’t live out the fan­tasy life that he’s cre­ated for her. These are the same kind of par­ents that force their kids into 5 dif­fer­ent sports and 10 dif­fer­ent activ­i­ties because they want their child to be the soccer-​playing con­cert pianist they never were. And now that they real­ize that - heaven for­fend! - their kid is going to be what­ever he or she wants to be instead of offer­ing them the vic­ar­i­ous thrills they’ve always wanted, they’re dis­traught. You never hear this crap from other people with dis­abled kids, mostly because if, for instance, you have a kid with Downs Syn­drome, you know the score from birth. It’s the fact that the par­ents of autis­tics get to spend 18 months plan­ning out when little Suzie will leave her ballet class at some exclu­sive day care center to attend Juil­liard that sets them on the path to crazy-​town.

In order to cement the stu­pid­ity of it all, the post in ques­tion ends with a link to Autism Speaks. Of course.

So if you do call in to Mr. Weiner’s radio pro­gram, don’t waste your time telling him the facts about autism. He can learn that from Wikipedia. Tell him that you’re sick of hear­ing these par­ents whine. I know I am.

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5 Responses to “Dear Michael Savage: Make fun of the right people, for the right reasons”

  1. Mr. Savage said some­thing about the world having chil­dren diag­nosed at a very early age, around two. I know it was early on with Jared - 18 months? - but I’m won­der­ing if that’s typ­i­cal?

    — CanadiensFan July 22nd, 2008 at 3:18 pm #

  2. Typ­i­cal is 18 months, mostly because kids get a check-​up and shots then, so it’s easy to see if they’re meet­ing their mile­stones or not, but there are clear indi­ca­tions at 15 months, and some stud­ies are show­ing that a pre­lim­i­nary diag­no­sis can be made at 3 months.

    — Jemaleddin Cole July 22nd, 2008 at 4:18 pm #

  3. Also: I’m sick of the whin­ers, too. Nobody likes a whiner.

    — CanadiensFan July 26th, 2008 at 6:27 am #

  4. This is the prob­lem with com­plain­ing about whin­ing: you can never tell if the people who agree with you are mock­ing you.

    — Jemaleddin Cole July 28th, 2008 at 12:58 pm #

  5. Jemal, this video made me think of your blog. Here is a Dad who’s at the oppo­site end of the whiner spec­trum.

    http://​www.​youtube.​com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​f​l​R​v​s​O​8m_KI

    — SiddGames August 6th, 2008 at 3:32 pm #

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