We recently had a discussion in class involving Gennifer Choldenko's Al Capone Does My Shirts along with disabilities and more specifically Autism (as seen with Natalie in the novel). As I was driving to class this morning, I heard an outrageous quote on the radio from Comedian Denis Leary's new book "Why We Suck: A Feel-Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid" that was just plain horrendous:
"There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumb-ass kids can't compete academically, so they throw money into the happy laps of shrinks . . . to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a [bleep] what these crackerjack whack jobs tell you - yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both." (From Leary's Book)
The quote and the following response to the statement can be found here.
The Autism Society of America responded: "For Mr. Leary to suggest that families or doctors conspire to falsely diagnose autism is ridiculous . . . [His] remarks reflect the same misconceptions of autism being caused by bad or unemotional parenting that were held over 50 years ago."
Leary's response, found here, seems to be an attempt to justify the nasty comment with the rest of the information found in his book.
I suppose without having read the book, like he says, I can't necessarily make a judgement on Leary. But even so, it does give us something to think about in light of the whole language choice debate.
