The Autism movement is barely a teenager. However it’s one bratty child. The movement really began after the infamous MMR link written by Dr. Andrew Wakefield; and at that point parents who were so stubborn that his science were accurate, started to begin a trend, new organizations would surface, older autistics in the “first generation” (those born from the mid 80s to early 90s) would start to speak out (but in a shuffled manner)
2000s – Anti Vaxxers, “Self Advocates” and Autism Speaks
It’s important to start the 2010s by what had occurred in the previous decade and how frustrations lead to overall anger throughout the community, as a hangover to the new decade.
Just as society was recovering from the fears of HIV/AIDS, Americans lost their high on fear and panic. It’s the Hollywood-esque business model that worked for film, so why could it work for news reporting? Autism still wasn’t getting much traction, till the alarm bells sounded in 2001 as the MMR link to the autism spectrum disorder was published by Mr. Wakefield in the Lancit papers. Around the same time, new autism organizations came along such as Cure Autism Now, and later Autism Speaks, which was founded by the Chairman of the National Broadcasting Company, Bob Wright and his now deceased wife, Suzanne. The former organization would merge with Autism Speaks in a couple years, as apparently M&A can occur in tax evading companies non profits.
Two ‘graph Drill on Autism Speaks in the 2000s
Autism Speaks was aided and still abetted by Bob Wright’s best friends, mostly people working at NBC or even better his pet project of the two cable networks he founded, CNBC and MSNBC. For a long time, you could tell who was Bob’s loyal friend if they had the Single-Blue-Puzzle-Piece-Pin on their clothing. Even earlier this year a guest on CNBC had the Loyalty pin on an episode of Fast Money. I also suspect someone within NBC had a fetish for blue as CNBC would go all dark blue in their branding in late 2005 (the same year the organization was founded.) Blue must be a favorite color, as it’s the now the so – believed “official” color for autism awareness.
Parents had perceived their child to be completely hopeless, if they can’t talk, they for sure can’t walk (autism doesn’t stop people from walking), and there’s no hope of anything close to what they could do with their handicap. The following year, Autism Speaks funded a short film called Autism Every Day produced by now a former prime time anchor at WPIX 11 in New York, anchorman Jim Watkins and his wife Lauren Thierry (formerly an on air anchor in other markets). If I were to come up with a tagline, the takeaway of that short was a woman stating “I was contemplating driving off the George Washington Bridge“. The child of the the subject that lead that mother to contemplate double murder-suicide was running in the frame of the camera for the entire time. Not to mention an audible gasp from the producer from proximity of the mic. Self advocates talk about the implied tones of the film framing them as “tragic burdens” which from my understanding of watching it didn’t imply that. However any explicit statements like I just shared has not been uttered by many self advocates ether. Not to mention the journalistic connection and the ethics that was not enforced by Watkins’ parent company the Tribune Company at the time of the film’s release. (The potty-mouth, frat boy, real estate tycoon Sam Zell bought the company, and Tribune was an ethically challenged company based out of the Windy City.) Self advocates also point to a 2008 PSA called “I am Autism” and really, that attack what was really lamely executed PSA, they highlight all the negatives by smearing. If a good advocate exists, they would’ve edited it to meet the sappy soul but bringing hope.
Speaking about those groups, the self advocacy began in mid decade, however they were on the fringe too, a minority voice. They would completely dismiss any of the severe cases of autism, and begin the trend of identity politics and rise of social justice warriors or SJWs. Most of their words were just insults to anyone impacted by autism (including this writer.)
2010s – The Clash & False Narratives on ASD
In 2007, an “online newspaper of the autism epidemic” called the Age of Autism began, to amplify what the mainstream media had neglected to report on the rise of cases. Well there was one, and that was Sharyl Atkisson, the former CBS News investigative journalist who could never trust any corporate or government interest at all. (Her reporting the government had covered up the vaccines and autism correlation at the Centers of Disease Control was allowed to be reported by CBS executives.)
In fact despite her leaving CBS News in 2014, the anti vaxxers had developed a love interest for her work, and still like her apparent courageous reporting that has a lot of right-of-center leaning. The woman self-described as an Emmy-winning journalist, apparently never felt a Peabody or a DuPont would be the best hardware to have…since “established” people wouldn’t award her for any reporting she did at that network. (In my opinion a DuPont or a Peabody shows that you’re the ball buster of nutcracker reporting for broadcast.)
AofA had kinda stolen the autism narrative too, as well as some other startup autism organizations such as the National Autism Association and TACA, Talk About Curing Autism by the end of the last decade. AofA would later on produce very over the top postings on a daily basis, the founders of the site had published a bunch of books, one actually titled the Age of Autism, and one of their media editors, Anne Dachel wrote a book in 2014, entitled The Big Autism Cover-Up: How and Why the Media Is Lying to the American Public acting as a hit job against anyone against their views. The mantra like Presidant Trump, the media is out to get you [personally] and the reckless author has a son with a case of autism, but you never know because like so many people on this end of the field, they see them as living objects and not humans. In fact the book in itself was mostly rip-and-read blog posts being poorly regurgitated for a book medium.
AofA by mid decade would start to have a bunch of content, of mostly melancholy tone of Poor-Me-I-Can’t-Have-A-Typical-Child…My-Child’s-Life-is-Over, and semantics like “Autism Mom”, “Autism Dad” and “Autism Parent”; by enabling parents to play the victim-card, as that was a standard practice in the Obama administration’s policies. (on the flip side, self advocates were notoriously known for the “#ActuallyAutistic” hashtag self-identifier.) Some of the writings had a very narcissistic style of themselves. However, the actual numbers of the severe autism, is still sketchy in my opinion.
Autism since the 2000s has been United We Stand (that is the parents who have given up on improving their kids lives by deflecting their anger to “Big Government”, “Big Pharama” and worse “Big Media”) and Divided We Fall (the self advocates who refuse to identify their qualities, given by their condition.) You have the anti-vaxxers acting like angry mummas and self advocates are like I’m Autistic and I am Better than You, Nothing About Us, Without Us™!
Vaxxed, Ex-Dr. Wakefield, and Playing… the Race Card!
By 2016, anger amongst the unknown got even worse. Robert DiNiro stood up to the producers of the film Vaxxed as the showing was shamed out of the TriBeCa Film Festival that spring. It was that time, the infamous leftist actor later disclosed to the public that his son is autistic, as it was never known before. He doesn’t know what caused it, and he felt it was unfair for a group to shame them from a showing to figure all this stuff out.
Though Vaxxed had a lot of flaws as I had seen a bootleg copy on YouTube before it got taken down by a DMCA order. The film was directed by – the unexpected man, Andrew Wakefield, who by this point was no longer practicing any medicine but still was insistent to propagate misinformation. If targeting boys being weird wasn’t enough, then maybe by going so far to play the sacred topic of race. And there was apparently higher cases where black boys are more susceptible to ASD than their non black counterparts. When you can’t win on attacking boys, just play the race card, as AmEx used to say in their ads “Don’t Leave Home Without It!” The film, being what it is, a very unethical medium. Rich white dudes with fancy glasses with expensive rigs, feel there is no responsibility to big screen content. The doc was heavily manipulative from my view. But no one can ever manipulate or fool me. I think the film had some really interesting execution on cutting things to the proper timeline to again give a really biased view that vaccines kills brains. As much as some of my heart felt for some of the families featured, I had to be skeptical that things were thrown on the cutting room floor to trick people into sympathy on false information.
Exploitation – Exemption of Autistics; Not OK if you’re a typical child
Autistics don’t have feelings, they are subhumans, therefore parents can write whatever the hell they want.
I know where I should really put in the following, but after realizing how much crap is on the Web now, this decade, I started really appreciate what my other has done for me. My mother chose to raise me and not to go college and/or party excessively. Or even harm typical children to death, cover them up, along with the crime and for whatever reason get away with it. That I am referencing was the 2011 trial against Florida’s Casey Anthony against her alleged murder of her daughter Caylee. She doesn’t possess any of the skills to write so negatively, in the same way you see in the supermarket tabloid like blogs out on the Web either.
As other portals started to talk crap about their own kids the underlying tones on subjects and styles, and even worse the medium accelerated. Parents would comment on a routine basis of being victimized by “Big Pharma”, that autism and high functioning autism must be separate; because feel autism is like cancer, they need to make it a medical issue, and use “Stages”…other statements of plans of double-murder-suicide or even worse making statements of “I wish my kid dies before I do.” (I understand the logic, your kid won’t outlive you better than you would, but the anger and style is not cool at all.) Apparently obsession of menstruation amongst non verbal females has been a strange topic to the point, it’s safe to say it’s some fetish amongst the mumma-bears on these blogs and social portals.
It doesn’t take you that long to find the sewage about autistics on the web. Autism Speaks, and AofA legitimized the idea: it’s perfectly okay to talk shit about your atypical child.
If it’s on your Chrome or Safari window, it must be true, and it must be OK to discuss or even do. That was the Decade of Autism for what it was.
Legitimizing Hopelessness by Typical minded Parents (To Siri With Love), #BoycottToSiri (Self Advocates)
A book published in 2017, called To Siri With Love was published by Judith Newman, a seasoned writer. The book is subjected of her autistic son. The book extends an op ed to The New York Times about her experiences of her son 3 years before. That narrative would evolve into a full-fledged book. While I have not had the time to actually sit down and skim through at least 20 pages to get a pulse on the narrative at my local B&N, I for sure can make some questions based on the context I’ve seen elsewhere.
- Why did a professional or seasoned writer feel that writing about really sensitive stuff of a child that is not of consenting age or is able to provide meaningful consent OK to publish for a book?
- Would your mental fitness be different if you wrote this about a typical son or daughter?
- Where the hell was the editors and lawyers at Harper Collins?
- And why would Harper Collins not have the balls to reject or severely edit the book for the level of decency about a specific and identifiable underaged individual?
- And The New York Times allowed some of these ideas to be publicized on print too?
- Did the NYT also legitimized in the print world “All Shit That Is Fit to Print”?
It’s safe to say that if the blogs and books already focusing on negative stereotypes of autism, and talking about “bathroom” related issues in a depth that merit such a conversation, then it became legitimized. Newman had also stated in the book she would take power of attorney to put this mildly, further neuter her child in the literal sense. The book focused on sexuality of her then 13 year old that had a lot of focus. Again if my mother would write a book about any of my sexuality (the lack thereof in 2000, I think publishers would laugh at her.) Newman responded to the self-advocates that they took things out of context. Um really? I never heard of an adult non fiction where a parent would talk about explicit mastrubation habits of any type of child and posses a negative (or “real”) tone to it.
Self advocates say wild things and so many went onto Amazon or B&N’s pages and delivered the generic anti-autistic, “alltistic” (apparently meaning ones who aren’t autistic) talking points, and claimed the book was “racist”, had “homophobia”, according to Amythest Shaber said without any citation of such claims.
“Never publish anything in any medium that your grandmother doesn’t want to see” ~ Steven Clickford
An “#ActuallyAutistic” writer at Bustle wrote a couple years ago attacking Newman, but would take one line quotes, and using emotion, and not logic to point out the books’ poor editorial standards, like any other typical person.
This is autism advocacy. It’s just social justice with misfits, though still looney enough to make noise. #ActuallyAutistic is just a bunch of people congregating on social media segregating any original thought, or risk being called an “ableist” without a logical reason. Self advocates rarely do their own homework or extend anger in in different ways.
However any sane editor at H-C should have warned her of the reactions from said groups. Self-advocates are like wild animals, and will come and bite you and poison you with slander and defamation on one liners; sadly so many can’t come up with a complete sentence indicating “anti-autism” agendas.
2018 – the 30th Anniversary of Rain Man
And to think people still think of autism of what was already an over-embellished stereotype at the time (yes the film was overdramatized for 1988) up till now? You know how I would react this crap?
“Time for Millian! Time for Millian! Time for Millian!”
What’s in Store? “Run, run, run away and never return”
“Acceptance” means to me “I’m Autistic and I am Better than You – You Resist Me, I’ll Resent You” is also just as dangerous as the anti-vaxxers obsessing about their daughter’s unable to handle their periods or even worse “crapisodes” about their kids not going to the bathroom appropriately. The number of severe cases of autism is not well documented, and the SJW (err self advocates) side is just as small as the rest of the hundreds of unique social injustice groups. In the 2010s they dominated the media’s attention, mostly on alternative platforms, but did get to the mainstream.
Going into the 20s, I think what we had seen this decade was the “Roaring Teens”. The biggest fear of misinformation of vaccines, and the ID politics of “autism acceptance” by playing the victim card of “#ActuallyAutistic” have long term implications hurting all people impacted by some form of the ASD cloud. Looking ahead, the future looks bleak. Personally I am trying to distance myself from all this conflicting noise, because it makes me “sick”.
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