Category Archives: Reviews

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Kennedy’s Misrepresentations of Autism

A person “on the spectrum” would hardly recognize Kennedy’s characterization of it.

In a press conference earlier this month Robert F. Kennedy Jr. had more bad advice to offer on the nature and causes of autism, or what used to be known as Asperger’s Syndrome. The Health and Human Services Secretary mischaracterized autism as a “preventable disease” and unfairly stigmatized those who are on the spectrum.  Not only do these neurodivergent people supposedly suffering with a dire condition, but “many” were once “fully functional,” but later “regressed” because of some sort of “environmental exposure.” These false claims were bad enough, but then he launched into a whole cluster of slights:

“These are kids who will never pay taxes. They’ll never hold a job. They’ll never play baseball. They’ll never write a poem. They’ll never go out on a date,” Kennedy said. “Many of them will never use a toilet unassisted. And we have to recognize we are doing this to our children, and we need to put an end to it.”

Oh, and autism supposedly “destroys families.”

The Trump administration playbook always seems to trivialize the complex, reaching too far for single and simple solutions. We currently have junk economics draining away American credibility. It is as much a disgrace for a health official in this country to pedal junk science. A person labeled with the slippery and still bewildering indicators of autism would hardly recognize Kennedy’s characterization of it. His suggestion that he will soon set us all straight is disingenuous, given years of substantial research that has already been done.

As the name suggests, Autism Spectrum Disorder comes in a vast array of behavioral and social responses deemed “unusual,” “obsessive,” or socially isolating. It is a highly variable condition that shows itself in different forms of thinking and relating to others. There are often mild manifestations of it that require nothing more than the understanding of others. Severe instances of speech or cognitive disruption may require more help. In addition, repetitive behaviors and picking up social cues can be a challenge. And noise or the operations of some machines may be bothersome. Even so, there are people on the spectrum who own businesses, hold advanced degrees, marry, and do advanced research. To be sure, at its onset at age 2 or 3 autism can create challenges to a caregiver. Children especially struggle to find the kinds of social skills and connections that are rewarding. But with age, most learn to cope with the consequences of this condition reasonably well, and would be offended by Kennedy’s disablism.

Kennedy is into the weeds from the start

Naming autism as a “disease” is misleading, and—like other forms of behavior that have been medicalized—takes many people out of the game. It suggests that individuals cannot be agents of their own adaptation. Many folks on the autism scale are doing fine as they are. And some familiar features of autism, such as giving extensive attention to one thing, or seeing obscure patterns or relationships, can be useful capacities that those of us who are hopelessly distracted may never acquire. It is a common idea among autism researchers that Sherlock Holmes would probably have been considered on the spectrum, and perhaps Albert Einstein as well. Well-known animal researcher and author Temple Grandin notes that she still cannot “read” others well, but her awareness of this challenge has helped her adapt and thrive.

Differences Versus Deficits 

Most of all, broad generalizations are risky. While some neuroscientists see what they consider to be unusual patterns of brain activity in autistic people, the causes and symptoms are not always accepted as representing a distinct condition to be treated. There are no definitive indications that “deletions” of genetic material causes autism. And evidence in favor of possible environmental causes is suspect. This murky etiology along with the wide spectrum of behavioral effects of autism has led some to question whether milder forms are really separate conditions at all; they may simply be  manifestations of natural neurodiversity. In this view, what is called autism may point to natural differences, but not necessarily deficits.

Then, too, I believe that our modern other-directed communication has been “normed” into American life, especially among families who believe they understand the social intricacies of “getting ahead.”  We often assume the worst for children left to the kinds of unstructured and solitary play that was the norm in previous centuries. This may be one reason that autism’s isolation and social awkwardness are relatively new disorders. Eccentricities that were once “understood”—sometimes with compassion, and at other times with institutional isolation—are now subject to intense study, and sometimes premature interventions. It’s easy to sympathize with Liane Willey, who notes in her book, Pretending to be Normal, “I do not wish for a cure to Asperger’s Syndrome. What I wish for, is for a cure for the common ill that pervades too many lives; the ill that makes people compare themselves to a normal that is measured in terms of perfect and absolute standards.”

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Portions adapted from the writer’s, The Rhetorical Personality (2010).

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The Murrow Play: A Timely Reminder

The play is a timely and generous act of public service by the 63-year-old film actor.

George Clooney is appearing on Broadway at the Winter Garden Theater next month in a theater piece adapted from his screenplay written twenty years ago with Grant Heslov. Good Night and Good luck is based on the successful 2005 film about Edward R. Murrow, easily the most honored news broadcaster in the history of the medium. Murrow’s name is still tied to references to journalistic courage that went from radio in World War II to the first full decade of commercial television. A group of young news reporters known now as “Murrow’s boys” saw him as a model, with most going on to develop important careers at all of the networks.

The action takes place in a tense CBS television studio in the bowels of Grand Central Station, as Murrow unleashes a broadside against Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy. It is 1953, and Murrow and producer Fred Friendly are ready to take on the senator known for reckless attacks on scores of civilians and celebrities imagined as “communist sympathizers.” At this time in the cold war the charges stung: the rough equivalent today of passing state secrets to the nation’s enemies.

“McCarthyism” still stands for career-destroying accusations by the powerful that have little validity. Sound familiar? Then, the specific issue was over the senator’s false accusations of communists in the Army, State Department, and probably the Girl Scouts as well. If he were more self-aware, our current president would hotly deny the many unflattering comparisons made today. Delivering lies and false accusations with abandon never seems to go out of style.

The uncomfortable coincidences are a reminder that the Fourth Estate will to have to stand strong against our accusatory President and his followers. The banning of the Associated Press from the White House is a case in point. They are soldiering on anyway, along with The Atlantic, The Wall Street Journal and the New York Times, among others. Ditto for several cable news outlets as well.

The play is a generous public service offered by the 63-year-old film actor who has never done live theater, tackling the role of Murrow for the first time. In a clip from the 2005 film a younger Clooney plays producer Fred Friendly, and Murrow is played with uncanny accuracy of David Strathairn.

The film and the play involve two key moments in Murrow’s career: a single program setting the recording straight about a mistaken charge  by McCarthy leveled against Milo Radulovich, a former member of the Air Force. The second event is a few years later in the form of a speech to peers warning about not caving in to soft news stories.

To be branded “pink” then was to be a national pariah and a false charge against Radulovich.  A See It Now program carefully prepared by Friendly and Murrow was a chance to call out this particular conspiracy theory that included allegations of communist collusion. This was no sure thing. The network and its sponsors were mighty unhappy that Murrow and Friendly wanted to take down McCarthy in prime time. CBS Chairman William Paley liked Murrow best when he did celebrity interviews for the popular Person to Person. But he was less enthusiastic about CBS Reports and See it Now when the Murrow team aired controversial programs on subjects like the blight of farm workers, or the empty attacks made by the rabid senator.  Here is a sample of Murrow at work in the Radulovich program:

The second moment emphasized in these dramas is a speech delivered in 1958 to a gathering of Radio and Television News Directors in Chicago’s Blackstone Hotel. In my study of Murrow in Persuasive Encounters (1990) I described the speech as a the rarest and most interesting kind of public address: a warning—a Jeremiad—to peers and colleagues. Murrow made it clear that the young medium of television was failing in its most important mission of providing nationally important and significant news.  With a bit of sarcasm he told his peers that their work is worthless if it does not help their audiences sort out fictions from hard fact. The address infuriated Paley, who favored light comedy in prime time.  But it was typical of Murrow.

Our history will be what we make it. And if there are any historians about fifty or a hundred years from now, and there should be preserved the kinescopes for one week of all three networks, they will there find recorded in black and white, or perhaps in color, evidence of decadence, escapism and insulation from the realities of the world in which we live.

For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must indeed be faced if we are to survive. And I mean the word survive, quite literally. If there were to be a competition in indifference, or perhaps in insulation from reality, then Nero and his fiddle, Chamberlain and his umbrella, could not find a place on an early afternoon sustaining show. If Hollywood were to run out of Indians, the program schedules would be mangled beyond all recognition. Then perhaps, some young and courageous soul with a small budget might do a documentary telling what, in fact, we have done–and are still doing–to the Indians in this country. But that would be unpleasant. And we must at all costs shield the sensitive citizen from anything that is unpleasant.

It might now be obvious to accuse television of “escapism and insulation from the realities of the world.”  But this was Murrow when the medium was still establishing its own conventions. And it suggests that his kind of journalism could still teach us something today.