Kasia July 23rd, 2008
Courtesy of Kit Brookside, here is a story about Michael Savage’s comments about autism and autistic kids.
I suggest watching the video on there – one of the anchors, Jim Watkins, has an autistic son. You can read his follow-ups on his work blog here, here and here.
I especially suggest listening to the video on the second Watkins link. Savage does emphasize that he thinks he was taken out of context, and that the “99%” he was talking about was 99% of diagnosed autism cases, not of “truly autistic” kids. However, Savage repeatedly refuses to respond to questions posed to him by the interviewer, Peter Thorne, many of which are eminently reasonable, and eventually hangs up on the interview.
It seems to me, from my very limited exposure to him, that Savage is not the kind of guy you can have a fruitful debate with. By “fruitful” I don’t mean that either one of you actually changes your mind, incidentally; I mean that you are able to actually talk TO the other person rather than AT him, and that there is some reasonable effort on both sides to at least attempt to engage the other person’s points.
Is autism overdiagnosed? I don’t know. But the thing is, Savage repeatedly refuses to give anything more than what is, essentially, anecdotal and circumstantial evidence to support his claim that it is. (Amusingly, he refuses to say what makes him an authority about this because the interviewer is not an authority on it. So if you are interviewed by a journalist, he or she has to have an advanced degree in the subject you’re speaking about? That’s a new one…)
There is a corollary to freedom of speech, you know. There’s a corollary to just about every freedom we have. Rights don’t exist in a vacuum.
The corollary here is that you can say what you want (within the limits of the law, which are pretty broad), but you are responsible for what you say; and sometimes what you say can have unintended consequences, for which you may be responsible. Sort of like how, in the Laura Ingalls Wilder book The Long Winter, Pa Ingalls points out to a greedy shopkeeper that, despite his legal right to do so, his charging as much as he can get away with for wheat that the townspeople need to keep from starving is going to end up driving him out of business come spring, when people once again have a choice of where to shop. It’s not a threat. It’s a statement of how the market works.
Kit suggests that we consider not supporting his sponsors. This blogger (Greg Reich) actually listened to Savage’s show with the explicit intention of collecting a list of sponsors, which he lists on his blog, and stated his intention to continue doing so indefinitely.
However, I don’t actually patronize any of the sponsors, except occasionally Home Depot (and I prefer Lowe’s anyway), so my boycotting won’t do much good. And I somehow don’t see him getting canned, not with ten million listeners. Again, the market at work.
If you’re of a mind to, by all means boycott his sponsors, and be sure to send them a letter explaining that you are doing so and why. Since I already don’t patronize them, I will do the only things I can do to a guy like Savage:
I won’t listen to him. And I’ll keep doing my little bit to try to keep my debates civil and reasoned.
** UPDATE ** Please note the comment in the combox by Sarah from Home Depot Communications. Home Depot disputes any advertising with or sponsorship of Michael Savage.
