House of Eratosthenes

1. You’re included in a class
2. Some other guy is included in a class
3. You react to your inclusion into this class a certain way
4. Your response to being included in the class should not affect that other guy in any way, shape, matter, form or regard, and yet…
5. It does.

I’m referring here specifically to Michael Savage’s comments on autism.

Radio host Michael Savage has said many controversial things in the past, but this is just downright stupid.

WOR radio talk show host Michael Savage, who makes a good living being outrageous, found himself in the middle of a new firestorm Monday after he branded most autistic children fakers who just need tougher parenting.

“In 99% 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?” Savage said last week in remarks that lit up the Internet over the weekend.

“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.'”

A few dozen parents protested outside WOR Radio, demanding Savage be fired.

They called it ironic that a loudmouth known for rants about immigrants, Jews, Muslims, gays, Democrats and nonwhites would go after innocents who often can’t even verbalize.

Ed Moffitt, 75, proudly showed a picture of Bob, his 8-year-old grandnephew. “Bob can’t speak. He never called Savage any names,” Moffitt said.

“We are dying to hear him say ‘Mommy’ or ‘Daddy.’ And [Savage] says that he is just acting out?” said the boy’s grandfather, retired NYPD officer Bob Moffitt. “It hurts me.”

WOR said they couldn’t be held responsible for what Savage says because he is a syndicated host broadcasting out of San Francisco. “We regret any consternation that his remarks may have caused to our listeners,” the station said.

On the air last night, Savage said his comments were “ripped out of context” by “far left Stalinists.”

I’ll agree the far left Stalinists are out to silence him, and any other conservative voice for that matter, but really, do you have to say such things about disabled children?

Just stupid.

It’s this chucklehead, Ace, Cassy Fiano and a few of her commenters on one side — me, Michael Savage, about three-quarters of Cassy’s commenters (her thread is the place I’ve been debating it) on the other side.

See, here’s the deal. Michael Savage was tactless. He was tactless to the point of being technically inaccurate. If you take his “99%” literally, his comments are easily disproven and even he will not stand behind them. In his remarks wherein he refuses to apologize for them, you see he’s taking the liberty of protesting he was taken out of context, by declaring the context after-the-fact. Barack Obama would be proud.

Here’s my ordeal:

My child — on paper — has “severe autism.”

He’s been diagnosed that way.

And it’s a crock of bullshit. No, that’s not just my opinion. It’s the opinion of anyone who’s ever met him…including his mother, who was really banging the drum and swinging the pom poms to get some kind of diagnosis — any kind of diagnosis — to make him genetically weird, so nobody else would have to take responsibility for his weirdness.

Here’s the part I don’t get…and if someone can explain it to me, I’d be grateful.

We have kids who are diagnosed with PDD-NOS and other shades of autism, who definitely have something neurologically wrong with them. We have other kids who simply don’t have the personalities their teachers would like them to have, and so the school district wants to skim cream off the top of the Medicare program — so along comes a convenient, and fraudulent, diagnosis. We have both of those going on.

Why the Loose Sweater Thread Paradigm? From where are all these parents, uncles, acquaintances, etc. of “kids who have been helped so much” by their specialized education programs coming? They’re swelling out of the cracks in the walls like angry red ants, ready to rip into Michael Savage or anybody they think is defending him.

Yeah I know what they want me to say. Michael Savage is a big crock and a doo doo head who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Well, sorry. I know better. My kid’s been diagnosed, and it’s part of a big scam to rip off Uncle Sam. I’m not going to partake in it, and I’m not going to pretend everything’s on the up-and-up when I know better.

It’s a scam, folks. This doesn’t mean every single child diagnosed with autism is in fact healthy; I know better, and while a word-for-word technical reading of Savage’s comments might produce that as a literal meaning, I think it’s safe to say this is not what he meant. (He did say 99%, after all.) Quoting from his clarifying remarks (linked above):

Just a few weeks ago doctors recommended dangerous anti-cholesterol drugs for children as young as 2 years of age! Without any scientific studies on the possible dangers of such drugs on children, corrupt doctors made this controversial, unscientific recommendation.

Increasingly, our children are being used as profit centers by a greedy, corrupt medical/pharmaceutical establishment….To permit greedy doctors to include children in medical categories which may not be appropriate is a crime against that child and their family. Let the truly autistic be treated. Let the falsely diagnosed be free.

And that’s my attitude. I’ll freely admit — there are kids out there who need help. It’s just that my kid isn’t one of them, and along with him, there are probably millions of other kids soaking up social services they don’t need, that could be going to other kids who need them more. That’s a busted system. And no, I don’t care who I’m pissing off, I’m not backing off of it.

I would instead question why they’re getting pissed off. Yes, they know kids who need the help. That means, as far as I’m concerned, they should be on my side. The resources their kids need, are limited. Let’s stop skimming them for fraudulent purposes. From whence arises this “all boats in a tide” nonsense? How come it is automatically and instantly dismissed that a plurality of kids, all laboring under this diagnosis, can be toiling away under different circumstances? What’s this artificial notion of sameness all about? This phony sense of unity?

You know what it reminds me of — is labor unions. As in, everyone else on the shop floor is putting together seven widgets an hour, you’re doing nine…so when you go home tonight, we need to set someone up to meet you with tire irons and baseball bats and give you an education. Just like that. Loose-sweater-thread; I cut a thread over where I am, somehow, irrationally, in a way that defines any logical explanation, some other guy miles away thinks his sweater is going to be undone.

I’ll just quote what I said on Cassy’s thread…

Some form of special instruction has been helpful to a child who has been so diagnosed. Therefore, anybody who pushes for reversing the diagnosis, or merely opening it to further question, must be wanting to HURT the child, right?

Wrong. News flash: Just about any child, save for the most brain damaged ones, will benefit from special instruction. It does not necessarily follow from that that they need it, or even that there is anything unusual about them. It proves nothing. Kids benefit from special instruction, period.

Stop it with the anecdotes, people. They don’t prove anything. They don’t even suggest anything. All it shows is that you’re using weak logic — the question under consideration is “is there a significant number of false diagnoses” and you’re answering it with “I know of one or two diagnoses that are not false.” It’s like saying, dolphins have fins, all fish have fins, therefore dolphins are fish. It’s phony logic and it doesn’t work.

If this was all above-board — I could comment on every single blog I can find, “Hey, my kid has been diagnosed with severe autism and I know it’s a huge crock of bullshit.” So long as I’m just talking about my own kid, and none other, I wouldn’t be pissing anyone off because they’d all look at my comments and say “okay, that kid doesn’t have autism, but I know mine does, so it’s all good.”

Instead, there’s all this angst.

That’s a big giant red flag for corruption if there ever was one. Sorry, it’s just true. If your child is really neurologically damaged and he has a real need for these services, you shouldn’t have any reason to fear some total stranger raising new questions about them.

We stopped spanking kids.

At the same time, we stopped using embarrassment to punish kids. In effect, we stopped punishing kids in any way.

“Learning disabilities” skyrocketed…at exactly the same time.

People who are paid good money to figure out what’s going on — can’t see a link between those two trends. Meanwhile, they or their employers are making money, directly or indirectly, on a per-diagnosis basis. And ASD (autism spectrum disorder) diagnoses are through the roof.

Sorry, if you can’t see something smells to high heaven on that, you’ve got a learning disability yourself. Maybe more than one.

Yeah, I don’t have much use for Savage because … well, lots of reasons. He’s tactless, over-the-top, and subscribes too much to conspiracy theories.

But your points are great. I hope someday your boy appreciates your expectations of him so that he will be an adult in control of his life instead of an adult demanding special treatment.

It’s so much better to be in control of your life (I know, to the extent that you can be … the point is to take control and steer your life, not let others do it.)

There’s this guy, Paul Lutus I discovered years ago when I downloaded an HTML editor he wrote. Smart guy. Don’t agree with him on everything (I do on most things), but I respect his opinion even on things where we don’t agree (such as the death peanalty – good argument, I just don’t share his conclusion. But I respect it.) The man is a thinker. He is, frankly, brilliant.

One of his sayings is: “Did you know you can’t steer a boat that isn’t moving? Just like a life.”

His site is: arachnoid.com
- philmon | 07/24/2008 @ 11:48

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I Made a New Word XXTuesday, July 22nd, 2008

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Tuesday, July 22nd, 2008