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I’m embarassed that this guy is on our side. He’s got more in common with the Krazy Kos Kids than conservatives. Things like this are why I’m ashamed of him.
For whatever reason, Michael Savage decided that he needed to attack the autism epidemic, saying some pretty inflammatory, insulting, and just plain wrong things. Check it out:
My first thought was, I wonder if Melissa has heard about this.
While I do agree with Savage that kids are often overdiagnosed and overtreated by idiot parents these days (hello, ADD), I don’t know that autism necessarily fits into that same category. And to say that children who have autism are kids whose dads just need to tell them to “wake up and be a man” is outrageous, insulting, and just plain idiotic. What makes Michael Savage, a political commentator, some kind of expert on autism? Probably nothing except that he wanted to say something inflammatory enough that he’d get people talking. I mean, this does not equal “spoiled brat”:
Autism is a severe disorder that first appears in infancy. Individuals with autism are characterized by problems with language, social bonding and imagination. All suffer from serious communication deficits, and some are mute. They do not establish close relationships with others, preferring to remain in their own mental worlds.
They engage in highly stereotyped and repetitive activities, exhibiting a marked aversion to change. About two thirds of autistic individuals are mentally retarded. For reasons that are unknown, most are male.
The causes of autism remain enigmatic, although studies of twins suggest that genetic factors play a prominent role. Still, genetic influences alone cannot account for such a rapid and astronomical rise in a disorder’s prevalence over a matter of just a few years. As a consequence, investigators have turned to environmental factors for potential explanations. The causal agents proposed include antibiotics, viruses, allergies, enhanced opportunities for parents with mild autistic traits to meet and mate, and, in one recent study conducted by Cornell University researchers, elevated rates of television viewing in infants. Few of these explanations have been investigated systematically, and all remain speculative.
But of course, to Michael Savage, this just means the kid is a spoiled brat whose parents need to stop being such pansies and hammer down the discipline. Real intelligent. I’d hate to hear what his thoughts on Down Syndrome are. The backlash is already building, but Savage is refusing to back down. Meanwhile, Autism United is hopping mad:
Michael Savage, the incendiary radio host who last week characterized nearly every child with autism as “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out,” said in a telephone interview on Monday that he stood by his remarks and had no intention of apologizing to those advocates and parents who have called for his firing over the matter.
“My main point remains true,” Mr. Savage, whose radio audience ranks in size behind only those of Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity, said in the interview. “It is an overdiagnosed medical condition. In my readings, there is no definitive medical diagnosis for autism.”
…
“He characterizes children with autism who are very, very ill — disabled children — as essentially bad kids; the only thing wrong with them is they have parents who don’t discipline them,” said John Gilmore, executive director of Autism United and the father of an 8-year-old with a diagnosis of autism. “That completely misrepresents what is going on with children with autism.”
“Basically, what he’s doing is parroting what used to be said about autism 40 years ago, back in the heyday of Freudian analysis,” Mr. Gilmore added. “It was blamed on bad parenting. There wasn’t a shred of evidence to support that.”
I’m not a big fan of the new style of parenting, which usually involves giving your child anything they want if they just cry and scream enough. I’m not going to argue that there are a lot of parents who need to take more of a tough love approach with their bratty kids. But to say that an autistic child is just a brat whose parents need to tell the idiot to straighten up is ignorant and idiotic. I mean, honestly — where does this guy get this stuff? It’s crazy and moronic and hateful, and it makes absolutely zero sense whatsoever.
And this is exactly why Michael Savage is the most hated conservative in America.
You ask where he gets this stuff? Well, I’m the parent of a child who has been diagnosed with severe autism, and I can promise you it’s a fraudulent diagnosis for the purpose of ripping off Medicare. What’s more, is nine out of every ten people who’ve met my son, will back me up on that.
From your excerpt that is supposed to qualify what exactly autism is…
Still, genetic influences alone cannot account for such a rapid and astronomical rise in a disorder’s prevalence over a matter of just a few years. As a consequence, investigators have turned to environmental factors for potential explanations.
In the last few years, it has become fashionable and trendy in the medical community to lend one’s professional support to an abomination known as the autism spectrum, leading to a whole cornucopia of fraudulent discoveries known as Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD).
Here’s how it works: Single mom becomes a single mom because she can’t relate with men. She has a boy, which she gets to keep, in spite of her emotional instability and fragility because the court system figures children need their moms. Being a spoiled brat her whole life, she’s accustomed to being a control freak and nobody calling her on her crap. So naturally she figures, since she wants to relate to her little boy as if he was a little girl, she ought to be able to. But she can’t.
If the boy was allowed to mature as a boy, it would be the one part of her life that she can’t micro-manage — and we can’t have that. Also, she’d have to admit that she’s developed friction with someone who’s more-or-less normal, and we can’t have that either. She’s never had to put up with that before. The boss who fired her, the landlord who evicted her, the ex husband, why, they were all just a bunch of jerks! Everyone she knows says so. So if anyone found this little boy to be fairly normal, she’d be forced to admit something she’s never had to admit before.
So he has a disease.
Also — during the same time this “disease” has been skyrocketing in our little boys, it’s become improper, and usually downright illegal, to spank little boys who misbehave. Or even stand them in the corner. It’s too “humiliating.” Now, if this outlawing of physical discipline took place thirty years before this explosion of The Four A’s (autism, asperger’s, ADHD and allergies) — or thirty years after — then I would agree, it’s perfectly in keeping with rugged scientific discipline to wonder what’s happening, scratch your head and go “Duh.”
But this was not thirty years before or thirty years after. It was exactly at the same time. Anyone working in the behavioral health field with letters after his name, pretending to be mystified, should lose those letters for an ethical breach. If he’s pretending. If he isn’t, he should lose those letters for incompetence. We stopped punishing our kids, and they started acting up. We then put a label on it because it was convenient to do so, it made single mothers feel good, and besides a lot of us were making a ton of money off it.
Overall, Savage is right. There are exceptions. Duffy from Pencader Days, http://firststate.blogspot.com, has discussed this in detail about his oldest kid, who is certainly an extreme case. There are many others like him. If I was Savage, I would not have said “ninety-nine percent,” that was irresponsible.
But there’s a lot of validity in what he is saying. We are putting an unprecedented amount of pressure on little boys to conform; not to say “please” and “thank you,” but to cease and desist all little-boy behavior. At the same time, the resourcefulness we have put into bringing behavioral stragglers into the fold, is now at a low ebb. For the most part, we give them a chance to act “normal,” and if they don’t snap-to and heel like a dog, we put ’em in a special class.
The result is that to be “normal” you have to be compliant. So anyone with an individualistic streak — not a rebellious one, but simply with a good understanding of how he wants to spend his play-time, by himself — will be identified as a special-needs kid. They’ll figure out what disorder to scribble in to box 13 on that form later on…for all that yummy Medicare funding. But the immediate need is to get him out of there, so the “normal” teacher can be left with 20 easily managed ball-bearing kids, instead of 30 “diverse” kids, some of whom are of the time-honored rough-n-tumble variety.
They simply can’t deal with Tom Sawyer anymore. We don’t respect the individual that much.
I quit listening to Savage six years ago. He’s rude, obnoxious, foul-mouthed, pessimistic, condescending, and downright depressing. I also didn’t buy any of his books, even as I concur that yes, Liberalism IS a Mental Disorder. (Did he write more than one book?)
Unlike Rush Limbaugh, Michael Reagan, or Sean Hannity, Savage never gives you any hope. Never any reminder that the country and its people are still great. No reason to think people can bring about change for the better. Really, no faith in anything at all. And this is coming from someone who agrees with his basic principles!
As you may know, he lives near San Francisco. He spoke at one point of sitting on the back of his boat, looking out over San Francisco Bay, and getting depressed thinking about all that was wrong with the world. I just shook my head and turned off the radio. It is inconceivable to me that anyone could own a private boat, AND be sitting in it looking out over that gorgeous bay, and still be thinking such thoughts. Say what you will about the way San Francisco is run like the city council’s private fiefdom…the entire Bay Area is possessed of unmatched natural beauty in so many places.
Savage also said on the radio some time ago that he wasn’t a Christian because he didn’t think God had time for him – that the Lord was obviously preoccupied with bigger things than his measly life.
I wish the man would take off his headphones, switch off his mike, and pick up a Bible. The Lord has a lot to teach him, and Savage has got a LOT to learn…about a LOT of things – Life, The Universe, and Everything, to borrow Douglas Adams’ book title. If he did those things, he would quickly learn that a person’s reasons for living do not turn on who wins some presidential election.
Savage is such a smart man when it comes to politics, but such an ignorant fool about everything else he has commented on.
I’m not even going to weigh in on the autism thing. My cousin’s got it, and I can tell you the disorder is real. Beyond that, I’d prefer to refrain from commenting on matters where I have no expertise.
Beyond that, I’d prefer to refrain from commenting on matters where I have no expertise.
And in response to that, I’ll just repeat what I keep telling “Kidzmom” about our son, and the prospect of gobbling up more taxpayer resources just to keep him from screwing off in class. (To which she continues to say “Yeah, I knoooooooow, you’re riiiiiiiiight” in that drawn-out, conciliatory way she has, right before going back to folding like a cheap suit before those “eckspurts”):
We are PARENTS. They are TEACHERS. When he’s eighteen, he has to pay attention at his job, without having federally subsidized teachers’ aids following him around. It is up to US to get him positioned that way. It is not up to THEM. And furthermore, the parents CARE about this. The teachers don’t give a good goddamn. Their role is to graduate his skinny butt out of their class for that year, or flunk it. As of Memorial Day next, he’s no longer their problem and they damn well know it.
We are living in an age in which we cannot trust the eckspurts. About anything. If any significant numbers of them have the reputation of being trustworthy and impartial about anything, somebody finds this out, and starts breaking the eckspurts in on the latest scam by setting aside a few slices of the pie for the eckspurts. And Savage is right, that is exactly what is happening with autistic spectrum disorders. We’ve already seen it with global warming.
One final thought: One of the reasons I don’t like what Savage said, is these debates tend to dissolve into exchanges over whether or not this-or-that disorder *exists*. This is a huge distraction, and an unnecessary one — it leads to anecdotes about whatever extreme case bubbled up in the lives connected to those participating in the exchange.
It’s all off=topic. We aren’t debating the extreme cases, we are debating the borderline ones. And I can tell you personally, you would be left completely blown-away, blinking & stammering, if I could impress on you how normal a child can be and still be “diagnosed” with an ASD. Savage is right. It’s a racket. It’s causative of, and symptomatic of, a drive to do away with manhood; it’s long overdue for an investigative process, one which culminates in more than a few luminary eckspurts being defrocked of their positions. We have been hoodwinked REAL good here.
Maria Laputa says: Savage rules.
CaptDMO says: SEE: “The Miracle Worker”
Oh, that’s different because…STFU.
I agree with the observations that recognize extreme cases,
yet chastise incompetent and lucritive diagnosis, “Beyond my control by accident of birth” excuses for victimologyhoodness (all the rage amongst current adults raised with ZERO integrity), and of course, FOLLOW THE MONEY.
Yep, “If you build it, they will come!”
*sheesh*
Ben says: Savage is not a conservative. He is some kind of right-wing populist who is obsessed with “language, borders and customs”, to the detriment of all else. He has gone on record as saying that he would support a left-wing Democrat if that politician would oppose illegal immigration, open borders and support making English as the official language of the US no matter how far left that hypothetical candidate would be on all the other issues.
And he spends a lot of his time on his show bashing real conservative talk show hosts like Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity mainly because they are far more successful than he is and will never match their audience. Then he bashes San Fran which everbody knows despite being a beautiful city it is a left-wing hellhole, yet he still chooses to live there.
I wasn’t really a fan the few times I bothered to listen to his show but know I just loathe this obnoxious asshole.
I R A Darth Aggie says: Out of curiousity, Cassy, what makes you believe that Savage is in fact a conservative, and not a liberal playing a conservative on the radio?
I’ll defer to Morgan K about the rate of incidence of autism, but also agree with him that boys will be boys is no longer tolerated in certain circles.
Josh says: Most often, Savage is the only one with enough balls to call it how it is.
The truth he speaks is often overshadowed by his coarse language and tenancy to speak his mind… something that the main-stream, drive-by government-media complex dispises.
Hence, the wall-to-wall media blackout on Michael Savage. It doesn’t matter how much of the market share he commands or how many bestsellers he writes, no one will touch him. He refuses to play by their rules, and frankly, can you blame the guy?
The NY Times even went as far as to try and keep his last book off of the bestsellers list. Eventually, after legal threats from the publisher, those rats at the Slimes backed down.
Yes, he may be angry, insulting and bitter…. but the guy’s a conservative in San Francisco. Can ya blame him?
Frank White says: It’s borders, language and culture Ben, and unless you want to live in the Muslim States of America you better get with it. Savage is the truth, but I’m sure you are too scared by anything other then the Republican talking points by The Golfbag and Pawn Vanity.
Bonnie_ says: My niece is autistic. There’s no “boys will be boys” problem with her since she’s a freakin’ GIRL.
I can tell she is super intelligent, but her wiring is slightly messed up. She is in a special school which is doing wonders helping her. Autistics are wired differently, and there is nothing they can do about it. She is the loving child of two happily married parents, too.
In addition, my fabulous younger brother is dyslexic. He had the whole gamut of relatives trying to tell our family he just needed the firm hand of discipline. He could read if we just beat him enough! He still can’t read, but yet he reads like crazy — he belongs to the library for the Blind and Dyslexic.
I stopped listening to Michael Savage a long time ago. Beating up on kids because they have problems that they have no control over is the lowest of the low.
I love Savage, even if he gets crazy every now and then. You try doing a 3 hour show every day and see if you don’t slip up occasionally. Living in this crazy lib-nazi country drives me nuts too. Savage is a Jeremiah, and of course everyone thought he was nuts too, and they were embarrassed too. Savage is the real deal, not just another apologist for the RINO-crat party. Savage is the one who knows that we are in a civil war – and the bad guys are winning, and the only way we are going to survive is to get down in the gutter with the lib-nazi vermin and rip their freakin heads off.
Big Mo says: Morgan – OH, GOOD GRIEF! “And I can tell you personally, you would be left completely blown-away, blinking & stammering, if I could impress on you how normal a child can be and still be “diagnosed” with an ASD. Savage is right. It’s a racket. It’s causative of, and symptomatic of, a drive to do away with manhood; it’s long overdue for an investigative process, one which culminates in more than a few luminary eckspurts being defrocked of their positions. We have been hoodwinked REAL good here.”
Sorry, ain’t buying it, nor your “here’s how it works” stuff. I have a son who is PDD-ONS, on that spectrum you label an “abomination.”
That “abomination” has helped my son immensely in his six years, and as has the hard work o0f my wife and me. He’s not a full-blown autistic like his cousin, who actually WAS yelled at by a moron like Savage instead of being treated, and now is fully incapable of living anywhere but a group home for autistics.
What you describe and what Savage describes is very far off the mark. It isn’t a “racket,” and that’s a pretty damn offensive charge. My mother-in-law has been a 6th grade resource room teacher for more than 30 years, dealing with kids whose parents didn’t do jack for their kids except treat them like Savage says they should. Well, guess what? They get to her and are so effed up it’s tragic.
As for my son, we’ve progressed tremendously to the point where he actually CAN BE A BOY: run, act up, wrestle with his brother, pay attention in school, get in trouble for the things that all boys get in trouble for, etc.
His identification as being on the spectrum isn’t some “racket.” And treating my son like that idiot Savage says would, well, turn him into an idiot like Savage, raging at the entire world around him, instead of a rough-and-tumble man who is in control of himself.
WayneB says: Is there far too much diagnosis of things like ADHD and ASD? I would say yes. Problem with people like Savage is that they believe that the overdiagnosis falls in the 90+ percentile range, which it simply is not.
For Autism and closely related disorders, there are some fairly simple guidelines for determining whether the child falls into that category or not. The difficulty is in determining to what extent they are affected and how to best guide them into a fully (or nearly) functioning role in society. Another difficulty is that at the near end of the spectrum are children who are not affected enough to make them dysfunctional. People like Savage assume that they are not affected at all, when they would benefit greatly from an altered curriculum. I realize that the availability of such is not always going to be there in the public education realm, but the parents should know about alternatives and if they have received the diagnosis, they will know to look into them.
For ADHD, diagnosis is not necessarily so straightforward (although I contend that if a kid falls asleep when you give him coffee, that’s a good indication), and for the lesser-affected individuals, treatment best consists of a combination of fairly strict discipline and lots of energy-blowing activity, and should not involve drugs. Again, however, people like Savage treat it as if it’s essentially non-existent. That’s why, “…these debates tend to dissolve into exchanges over whether or not this-or-that disorder *exists*,” because there are large numbers of people who treat them NOT like they are merely overdiagnosed, but as if they are non-existent.
Joe says: If you’ve ever met anyone with genuine ADD or ADHD, you wouldn’t question whether it’s real. Same with autism. However, there is no question that both are being overdiagnosed in disturbingly large numbers–most diseases are. Parents want explanations and doctors and pharmaceutical companies are more than willing to make money telling parents what they want to hear.
One interesting point is that while autism diagnoses have increased, mental retardation diagnoses have massively decreased. Some of this is due to parents preferring their children be autistic rather than “retarded”, but I suspect that most is due to incorrect diagnoses in the past where mental retardation was used to describe a host of ailments. (Lumping diseases together causes a lot of apparent “epidemics”.)
I R A Darth Aggie says: There’s no “boys will be boys” problem with her since she’s a freakin’ GIRL.
Yes, and? you had a point there?
Big Mo says: Joe – you make a valid point. My extended family includes a full-blown autistic cousin and two other men who are respectively acutely mentally retarded and severely mentally retarded (both from tragic external causes, not genetics). The autistic cousin-by-marriage was considered merely retarded and given the “Savage treatment” until he was 12 and correctly diagnosed as profoundly autistic. By then, though, it was far too late for him.
REDPEN says: Fiano, you’re way-off on this one. Savage may not be perfectly correct, but you’re not autistic either and should be able to discern the meaning of his statement.
Svaga is the only person on radio left who expresses his opinion. If you don’t like it don’t listen. Could a remedy be any simpler or any more under your control?
So, Fiano, what’s your real problem with Dr. Savage? Maybe that he’s right?
George Renneberg says: I don’t care for Savage (a pseudonym) because of his abrupt, totally disrespectful manner with his callers. He will call people with whom he disagrees idiots and the like. It’s a matter of style, and he has no style. But if you can get past his modest (!) manner, much of what he actually says is not far off the mark. Autism IS severely over-diagnosed.
Peter Gozenya says: Fiano – he’s actually right on this one. He also said AIDS is a big money grabbing racket, which is true. There is a cure for AIDS – don’t have butt sex and share needles. Only tragic innocent victims of AIDS are the pediatric cases born with it. Those children are the true victims. Back to Autism, I’m 47, first I ever heard of the “disease” was within the last 15 years (same with ADD/ADHD). What the hell did they call it 20+ years ago – bad behavior. That’s what it was and still is. Now it’s nothing but a cause celeb…. Just another way to add another group of kids to the victim status and prove to them that you don’t have to be accountable for your actions, the nanny state will take care of you.
Big Mo (#12) —
AGAIN, you’re on a long list of folks who confuse the “definite” cases with the borderline ones, and the borderline cases are where the problem is.
The ASD spectrum is an abomination. I have specific reasons for calling it that. You have disorders that involve verifiable, physical neurological damage. Like, one of the most rudimentary tests is for brain stem tumors/lesions.
There are disorders that are purely behavioral. There’s this list of behavioral traits. If you show a few of these traits, you might have the disorder, and if you don’t, you probably don’t. How did we get the list of traits? By observing kids who have the disorder. So the disorder is defined by the traits, and the traits are defined by the disorder. Which came first, the chicken or the egg…
Ultimately, such disorders come down to this: The pinhead researchers think all the kids all over the world should be acting a different way. THAT IS ALL.
But that can be quite valid. What is not valid, is forming this “spectrum” that combines behavioral disorders with physiological ones. That’s the abomination. Why do I say it is an abomination? Because when you “diagnose” a kid with one thing, it means you’ve conducted a test and produced physical evidence; you “diagnose” a kid with some other thing, you’re just saying he acts weird and that’s purely a matter of opinion.
Are the medical professionals spelling out this distinction to the anxious moms who are trotting down to the office for a diagnosis? No, they’re not. They’re diagnosing…and these moms are left with the impression it’s like diagnosing for — well, a broken foot. Or for diabetes. And that’s not what’s happening.
Abomination.
Now, let’s proceed to this thing #10 said…
She is in a special school which is doing wonders helping her.
This is probably the most commonly used argument used to prop up the phony autism/ASD diagnoses: 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.
Big Mo says: Morgan – stop it with your own generalizations. “Ultimately, such disorders come down to this: The pinhead researchers think all the kids all over the world should be acting a different way. THAT IS ALL.”
Bullcrap. Just pure bullcrap.
And “Why do I say it is an abomination? Because when you “diagnose” a kid with one thing, it means you’ve conducted a test and produced physical evidence; you “diagnose” a kid with some other thing, you’re just saying he acts weird and that’s purely a matter of opinion.”
Okay — that made no sense.
I’ve only given you a few examples. My mother-in-law has seen this for the past 30 years. So has the man who does RDI with my son. Their knowledge of the spectrum, from the deep end to the shallow end, is quite profound. Your knowledge? Heh. It’s basically, in so many words, to tell me, my wife, and our entire cast of suppoters that it’s a misdiagnosis and we should just man up and stop letting our son be such a sissy. Is that it?
You sound like you had a bad experience and, like Savage, are making sweeping blanket statements that IT’S ALL WRONG, WRONG, WRONG, and we’re fools if we don’t accept your interpretation.
That’s what it sounds like.
Well, sorry. I ain’t buying. We’ve investigated, tested and even saw impartial people to ask if we’re wrong, if we’ve over-medicated him and we were harming him. Each one returned an independent evaluation that confirmed what we were doing.
So, again, try not to generalize. Please. It’s really offensive, especially when you don’t even know me or the — ahem — thousands upon thousands of other parents in this situation.
Shannon in AZ says: Pysch drug industry took a 25% hit on their bottom line when the black box labels were put on their drugs for depression. They have since changed to other areas to get psychs to falsely label in order to boost their profits up.
There is a lot of false diagnosis of autism and all the other things that kids are getting diagnosed with. It is all about money and has nothing to do with helping kids grow up experiencing life. And it is all about destroying the future leaders of our country who are usually men – which is why boys are the primary target for psych drugs.
Gredd says: Wow, Cassy, did you know you had so many ‘experts’ that read your blog? /chuckle
Big Mo –
I think it is you who is reading into it that my comments must apply to your various anecdotes. AGAIN: I call it into doubt with certain individuals, and the careless debating mindset, that’s you, reads into it “He’s saying there’s no such thing as autism!”
Careless on your part.
Here, let’s turn it around. YOU are saying it’s not overdiagnosed, correct? That every kid ever diagnosed with it must have it, right? Because I notice that seems to be the true point of our disagreement; not these red herrings about whether ASDs “exist” or whether kids are “helped.” And when I say something different you find it “really offensive.”
If that’s the point of disagreement, you just flat out lose, dude. It’s just a fact. Kids are overdiagnosed. The professionals need to see very, very little eccentric behavior before they sign on the dotted line; when I find the diagnosis and question them about it, they don’t know what they’re talking about anymore and they’re not willing to stand behind it anymore.
Now are you saying I’m making that up, or that I’m lying? Would you care for me to comment on whether that would be “really offensive”?
Tim Budd says: Is Thomas Sowell a lune too? (Check out some of his columns on this subject and his book about late talkers). Please. The autism “spectrum” is the biggest lie since every single boy who behaved like a boy had ADD. Iy is all part of the it takes a village mentality that decrees the government must intervene in every family as early as possible … how soon after full-day kindergarten did we start hearing about universal pre-school?
YOU are saying it’s not overdiagnosed, correct? That every kid ever diagnosed with it must have it, right?
He isn’t saying either of those things at all and I think you know it. There is likely some merit to the position that a host of mental disorders are overdiagnosed, but it’s ridiculous to assert that they don’t exist.
Savage is an uneducated bigot. Why are you (or anyone else) defending him? Is anyone going to tell me that calling people names and insulting them is somehow going to bring anyone into the conservative tent who wasn’t there already? Puh-leaze.
Limbaugh can convert liberals to conservatives because he uses facts and analysis. He wouldn’t dream of suggesting that some liberal douse himself with gasoline the way Savage would.
Willie Rivers says: Please. Before you go on a guilt-ridden trip about Savage, you should hear his whole speech IN CONTEXT. I did, and I can say categorically that he didn’t say kids with autism are brats.
This phrase was taken out of context by “Media Matters” operatives. Come on Casey, you’re being too willing to throw people under the bus, for what? Political correctness? Savage tells it like it is. If you can’t take the heat, turn liberal.
Ben says: Well Frank White, you can say what you like about Micheal Weiner (the douchebag’s real name) since he is faux conservatism for faux conservatives like yourself, I really don’t care. But I will say that if it was really him that is all that stands between us and this Muslim States of America of which you speak than we’re really screwed because it will only be people like yourself joining his sanctimonious cause which is only about himself.
He isn’t saying either of those things at all and I think you know it. There is likely some merit to the position that a host of mental disorders are overdiagnosed, but it’s ridiculous to assert that they don’t exist.
I haven’t said they don’t exist, and when you listen to Savage, he didn’t say they don’t exist.
What Mo is doing here, is engaging in a classic tactic — he confuses the moderate with the extreme, by putting words in the mouths of others. So you’re right, what I’m doing is turning the tables. Is autism overdiagnosed? If he says no, he’s engaging in a ridiculous proposition. If he says yes, then we have no disagreement because he’s agreeing with me.
I really don’t know how to make it plainer. WE AREN’T DEBATING THE EXTREME CASES, WE’RE DEBATING THE BORDERLINE ONES. Which syllable is hard to make out?
Now, take a look at how little it takes to tick the guy off. Here’s this eleven-year-old boy; I happen to be his father, but let’s just say I’m an acquaintance. I know him, you guys don’t.
We’ve got this crackpot diagnosis. I’ve paid the money to get hold of the complete medical file, and I’ve gone through it page by page. You two guys haven’t.
I say, “I think this is a false diagnosis” with regard to this boy who is a complete stranger to the two of you. And wham, bam, it seems I’ve offended someone.
You know what? I think, if everything was on the up-and-up, this wouldn’t be causing any friction. Big Mo would say “Oh well, maybe that kid shouldn’t be diagnosed that way, but I know the kids I know, definitely should be.” That isn’t the attitude he’s taken. Evidently, this is some kind of religion. No, more like a labor union — one kid accepts his “protection” from Medicare, fradulent or otherwise, and all the other kids have to or it’s time to bust kneecaps.
Shakespeare would love this. The lady doth protest WAY too much.
Frank White says: Ah Gentle Ben the Bear, tisk tisk. If any of the retards here had bothered to do some research, or even listen to his show, you would know that schools get more money when they classify kids as autistic when they really have some other type of disorder. That although a lot of these kids do have problems, they are not being helped and just lumped into the category of autistic so some school can get more money.
Big Mo says: Morgan, hold on, hold on.
You claim I’m mixing up extreme and borderline. I’m not. I fully understand the difference because my family has both.
You say “Now, take a look at how little it takes to tick the guy off. Here’s this eleven-year-old boy; I happen to be his father, but let’s just say I’m an acquaintance. I know him, you guys don’t. We’ve got this crackpot diagnosis. I’ve paid the money to get hold of the complete medical file, and I’ve gone through it page by page. You two guys haven’t. I say, “I think this is a false diagnosis” with regard to this boy who is a complete stranger to the two of you. And wham, bam, it seems I’ve offended someone.”
No, you didn’t offend me with your *personal* experience. I actually applaud you for being your child’s strong advoacate. Would that more parents were like you.
Rather, I’m offended by your assertions that “It’s a racket. It’s causative of, and symptomatic of, a drive to do away with manhood; it’s long overdue for an investigative process, one which culminates in more than a few luminary eckspurts being defrocked of their positions. We have been hoodwinked REAL good here.”
THAT is what I called BS on: Your characterization of this as a “racket” and calling the spectrum an “abomination.” THAT’S what set me off.
However, I was in haste and totally missed your personal story in your response and how much that was part of it. It was not my intention to attack **you personally** or offend you personally. My apologies. Rather, I was going after your statements.
We’ve both been through somehwat similar things–you for much longer–and we obviously have a much different take. Yours was decidely negative. Mine? Still a struggle. I AGREE that there can be, and has been, too much over-diagnosis and mis-diagnosis, especially as the shallow end of the specturm. Such as: Is he PDD? Is he ADHD? Is he bi-polar? Language-delayed? A combination? Or just a regular rambunctious boy? (And I know that Savage didn’t say that autism doesn’t exist, or whatever.)
(However, there has been much more correct diagnoses of late. My wife’s cousin is a perfect example of someone who was misdiagnosed about 2 decades ago, and got royally effed up because of it.)
So, again, I’m sorry for taking what you wrote very personally and all but ignoring your personal experience. Not my intention, but I guess that’s what I did.
(And for the record, I wasn’t using any “tactic.” I’m not clever enough for that. Rather, I reacted as a bull to a red flag.)
Riteaidbob says: Great job at missing Michaels point all together. Vaste majority of diagnosed autisms is WRONG! Some exists but most are not sick with it.
Wake up idiot.
LM says: I’m a special educator – yes, I admit it – and an occasional Savage listener – yes, I admit that, too. Not a Savage fan, just a listener.
The problem with many of these diagnoses (autism, Aspergers, ADD, etc) is that they’re a collection of symptoms without an actual, identifiable cause. Hence the claim Savage made…and he’s by no means the first to make it…that there’s much abuse for that very reason. Why? As has been pointed out above, there’s money to be made on these diagnoses on several fronts – drug companies, doctors, psychologists, school districts and even families. The kids may or may not be helped by whatever steps are taken for them, and yes, any kid is helped by “specialized instruction.” Who wouldn’t be?
The problem has been and remains the simple fact that no one can authoritatively say what autism is or is not. They can DESCRIBE it in great detail but can’t EXPLAIN it. Is it the manifestation of early brain trauma that went unnoticed? Is it what it used to be considered: a form of mental retardation that has been relabeled simply because “retarded” has gone from being a technical term that simply means “slowed” or “delayed” to being an insult? I don’t know. Neither does anyone else. Had Savage stuck to that point alone there’d be no controversy here, I suspect.
None of this is to say there really isn’t such a thing as autism or ADD (and I say this as one who will fall asleep if I drink too much coffee). I’ve seen boys and girls with autism (again, whatever “autism” is) and I can tell you that when it is a profound case it IS very real and debilitating; it is beyond the kid’s control. The problem is where the “spectrum” comes into play…there’s something going on with all the kids I’ve seen on the “spectrum” but it’s all too subjectively diagnosed and, as Savage pointed out, the child’s self-determined behavior does often figure in. And again – this bears constant repeating – too much money flies around on all sides to allow for careful, objective reasoning. Obvious, fair questions can’t even be asked for risk of offending this person or that person. Result: kids get labeled permanently so others can make money. I help them as I can. But I have no illusions that there’s a lot of voodoo and snake oil going on here.
LM says: Last sentence should read, “But I have no illusions: there’s A LOT of voodoo,” etc.
LM says: Oh…I too sometimes wonder if Savage is a just a fake — someone who has tried to cash in on the Rush avalanche by saying what he *thinks* conservatives want to hear BUT, because he isn’t one of them, ends up saying things totally opposed to conservative thought. Much like Boortz (fiscal conservative but social liberal). At least Boortz is honest enough to admit he’s not a connie. Savage…? I really, really wonder.
wolf says: listen to the full show at talkradiownetwork . Media matters is run by david brock and a bunch of marxists perverts who hate all conservatives. savage is one of the few on the right who regularly blasts the republican bush-bot trans-nationalist line. by his own admission he’s a independent conservative, he says what he believes and its his right to do so. join the facist/conformists on the left if you think otherwise.
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