I hope this makes sense

Miscellaneous blah blah today.

Sometimes I wonder how it is possible people can think others are ridiculously stupid. Does anyone really believe that these people are who they say they are? Come on... where did they go to promote their agenda? Fox News. It's so obvious they are people who, for whatever reason, are attempting to make Democrats generally and Obama specifically look bad. A group that claims: "This website was founded in the desire to reveal the corruption, misconceptions and distortions of the liberal and biased media who have prohibited the free flow of ideas and truth," has no true interest in the middle ground they claim to occupy. The liberal bias? Who is it that owns the largest chunk of the media on the planet? Here's a hint: it's not Oprah Winfrey. Regardless of their clear agenda, I hope they fall into the dustbin of history sooner rather than later; we don't need more pandering to those who lack the ability to think critically or who think it's funny to cause demonstrable harm to the cause of democracy.

Simon's Cat has a new video and it is the best one, yet! Well, it's the best one until the next one:



I spent a lovely morning trying to get myself to class. These are the times when being ill sucks more than it is irrelevant. I'm clearly sick with something (pneumonia? probably) that is causing all kinds of pleasant effects. When I get sick my body does two things: it fights anticoagulation and the deficits I already possess make themselves really, really known.

Weakness? Oh, I must have forgotten to condition my hair because this brush just won't go through it.
Anxiety? Excuse me while I shake here in the corner.
Dizziness? Wheeeeeeeee! the merry-go-round goes faster! faster!
Fatigue? The sun hitting the horizon means it is time for sleep, right?
Words? What? No, you said what. What? I don't know. Wait, what?

Did you hear about Michael Savage? Disabled Politico blogged about this several days ago and I've been wanting to mention it, but the whole sick issue has been getting in the way. Michael Savage, a man with a PhD, mind you, thinks that autism is a fraud. All those kids need is a strong male hand to tell them to stop being babies and stop acting like idiots. I know I don't need to say much about this as it speaks for itself, but it does make me wonder if Savage has suffered some brain trauma. He's bound to know that no matter what he thinks about autism, this kind of thing is not going to make him any friends and is likely to lose him his job. Whether you agree or not, calling people who are considered disabled (a whole 'nother debate there) frauds is not going to go over so well. There will be people who will say that the world has become too P.C., but that misses the point; the point is that when a thing is medically documented it is not something anyone else gets to pass judgment upon as being "fake." Even if you think people use it as an excuse for bad behavior, you still don't have the right to discredit the entirety of the thing. It's as if people think that the exception proves the problem, when the reality will always be that the reason we even know about the exception is because it is remarkable among sameness. We hear about the abuse far more than we hear about the need because the need exists in a bland, realistic way. The abuse is something that exists in a sensational, look at me! way.

What I am trying to say, rather weakly today, is that I am tired of the abuse of a thing, the exception of a thing being the definition of a thing. We saw this with "welfare mamas" during the first Bush (Sr.) campaign and we see it over and over with everything else. If a cop rapes a man with a broom handle, it suddenly is indicative of all cops. This is seen even more so when we're talking about things like disability or behavior. When someone brags about getting disability for something they don't need, that becomes indicative of people who receive disability. Yet, how many people know that disability payments are extremely hard to get and do not cover basic living expenses? The exception never, never proves the rule.

I've gone off on a bit of a tangent, I know. Autism is not something that is lacking in clear diagnostic guidelines. Autism is not something you can just snap out of with a good smack on the butt every day. Yet again, we have this asshole with a microphone who thinks it is easy because he has never had to deal with it, he's never been intimately acquainted with the thing itself. We all do this, of course. Most of us, however, have the sense to realize that just because our experience is different doesn't mean our experience is right or universal. Hell, I got a whole new understanding of the crushing despair associated with depression when I had that horrible reaction to Trileptal. I'm sick of the conceit so many people have that because they have experienced things differently they know better than others what the truth of the matter, any matter is. The reliance on blind anecdote, or anecdote without examination, is ruining us as a society and it must change.

Michael Savage is hardly worth mentioning because he is so obviously an asshole and an idiot. The same is true for the organization I linked first in this post. These people will always be marginal in society because they do not have the best interest of society at heart. But that doesn't mean we can just roll our eyes and walk on past when we see their ridiculous antics. The necessity to stand up and say "no" to them is never going to go away. In a quick search for the reaction to Savage I saw that the autism guide on About hoped that people would not respond to Savage. I had to shake my head at the lack of care that attitude indicates and wonder how on earth someone who professes to have an interest in autism in particular could be so blindly blase. It is in how we deal with the marginalized lunacy that we learn that it is lunacy in the first place. Look at what has happened with the antivaccination canard: too few people spoke up and now it has unleashed an epidemic, and not an internet epidemic, a real epidemic.

Ya know, I am simply lacking the strength to write any more. One final note: Matt Scott didn't win the Espy and that makes me sad. But he did have a great time and he has an incredible attitude about it. We should all endeavor to be more like him.

I'm going to watch The Ghost and Mrs. Muir, now. I watched Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism the night before. Meh, nothing we didn't already know. The funny thing about that documentary was that I was only half way paying attention until I realized that the disguised voice of one of the anonymous interviewees was Keithy. I'd recognize his modulation anywhere. God, I love netflix. Oh, Jon and I tried to see the new Batman movie in the middle of the day on Saturday. Yeah, no. It was sold out for the entire day by 2:00. Has anyone seen it, yet? I'm curious. Wow, for someone who lacked the strength to write anything more, I've sure written more than I wanted to. Wait, what?


Picture credit

Stumble It!