Tuesday July 22, 2008 at 10:32
Savage Stands by Autism Remarks - NYTimes.com
Michael Savage recently said some ridiculous things about autism. He said in part that an autistic kid is “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.”
It occurred to me, as the parent of an autistic child (two, technically — my youngest daughter has been diagnosed with Asperger’s, which is very high-functioning autism) to be outraged, then it occurred to me: it’s just Michael Savage.
He’s made an entire career out of thinking of what a psychopath with access to the radio airwaves might say, and saying it. That’s all. He’s a provocateur, and probably a bit of a psychopath himself. My question isn’t why Savage said what he said — my question is why is anyone paying any attention to him?
Radio hosts like Savage are old media’s answer to the Internet Troll. The very thing they thrive on is attention. And that attention includes outrage. To a guy like Savage it’s all good. He simply thinks, ‘criticism, whatever — more for me, either way.’
No one would have asked me, but if any of the outraged people who spread the word about Savage’s statement had bothered, I would have said that the last thing the guy needs is attention, and he isn’t worth anyone’s outrage. He isn’t worth my autistic child’s last messy pull-up, for that matter. Treat him like the sad, twisted little homunculus he is. Treat him like a Troll. You ignore Trolls on the Web, they go away. It’d take a while with a guy like Savage, but eventually, ignoring him would have the same effect.
