Monday, May 25, 2009

Gotta Love Denis Leary

So this group Autism United posted the autism chapter of Denis Leary's book, allowing me to finally read it without actually having to line his pockets.  Wow, he is one hateful little man.  Nothing redeeming about him, not even his work for firefighters.

CHAPTER 6 AUTISM SHMAUTISM

In my day self-esteem came from actual performance and a clear understanding of your place in the world. The facts were laid out almost from the get-go-if you wanted to be a model and you were a girl you had to be tall and thin. If you wanted to play baseball there was no god dam wiffle ball or a special "soft" pretend, fakey baseball set up on top of a standing tee -- you had to learn how to hit an actual pitched HARD baseball. Which sometimes would hit you in the face if you didn't get out of the way fast enough. Which would break your face. Which would hurt like hell. If you wanted to be in a rock band you had to learn how to sing and actually pay an instrument. While on drugs. Lots of drugs. If you were ugly then you were ugly and there was very little hope you were going to change the way you looked unless the baseball that crushed your face rearranged the bones and let you come out the other end looking like George Fucking Clooney. These were the cold, hard facts of life and your parents were in charge of supplying you with every single one of them.

There is a huge boom in autism right now because inattentive mothers and competitive dads want an explanation for why their dumbass kids can't compete academically so they throw money into the happy laps of shinks and psychotherapists to get back diagnoses that help explain away the deficiencies of their junior morons. I don't give a shit what these crackerjack whackjobs tell you---yer kid is NOT autistic. He's just stupid. Or lazy. Or both.

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I know a couple of autistic children and let me tell you something they both have in common-they are extremely bright and attentive and  much like Rain Man-have individual talents and abilities that would lay your empty little tyke's video game-addled soul to waste. A truly au tistic child may be able to reproduce music he or she hears with perfect pitch-entire classical pieces, the rock opera Tommy, the latest hit Broad way musical-over and over again. OR tell you instantly upon hearing what your birthday is-what day it has fallen on every year for the last four decades. What the weather was on those days. Who the president was at the time. What the number one song on the radio was just before singing it note for note and word for word. THAT'S an autistic child. Not some fat-assed simpleton whose brain has been fried by television and the Xbox and no proper daily attention from his or her supposedly caring parents.

Maybe your kid is not autistic. Maybe he's just a dolt. And thank your lucky stars for that. Face the facts. Autism is up and who knows why--parents who wasted time, their brain cells and a lot of healthy DNA on way too many recreational drugs is this doctor's guess---but I refuse to sit here and believe that half the idiotic offspring I come across even amongst my own friends and family are a part of that problem.


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