Monday Autism News Potpourri

Published April 20, 2009 @ 09:54AM PT

1. New Appointments: The new Department of Health and Human Services Office of Disability director has been chosen, and it's Henry Claypool. Claypool has been involved with disability policy for over 25 years, both in making it, and as the recipient of supports and services from it. This appointment doesn't seem to have been met with much comment or criticism, at least not that I've heard. It's sort of "duh" to appoint someone with a disability to the office of disability--same should be true of appointing autistic people to offices that develop autism policy.

2. Ironic Postings: The Examiner noted that AHEADD declared April 18 Adult Autism Awareness Day--a bit of deep weirdness in it being posted to the "special needs kids examiner?"

3. Special Interests: The article SHS magician featured on PBS program is about a Snohomish (WA) high school magician. While the "overcoming" language is a tad offensive, the idea of using ones special interests as a tool for building relationships with others is pretty keen. It reminds me of the Lego study (and also of what works best for me).

4. Misuse Musings: Even my most refined news searches kept picking up a nonsequiter article about roofers in New York that had nothing at all to do with autism--except for the text, "This was a completely new phenomenon in the roofer's world: a mass upper class that was so immersed in symbolic and digital cerebration that it had become incapable of carrying out the most ordinary functions--had become, in effect, like small children with Asperger's symptoms." In the comments to a blog about the article in a space not even remotely related (scroll down to stefanie's comment April 14, 2009 9:04 PM) to what's typically discussed here a commenter wrote, "Maybe these customers acted like people with Asperger's syndrome because they *had* Asperger's?" and goes on to do a fair bit of nice educating. A few thoughts: 1) Is the word "Aspergers" starting to be misused as an insult or personality type? 2) To that commenter--yes indeed. It's very important to check one's assumptions before passing judgement.

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Dora, you asked, "Is the word "Aspergers" starting to be misused as an insult or personality type?" And I answer that it appears to be. When one of the two high-profile movie reviewers for Entertainment Weekly can make a "pun" on the word by writing it as "Ass-pergers" and I see other things like this in the popular press, I have to say that yes, it is starting to be misused in this way.

Posted by Emily Willingham on 04/20/2009 @ 11:16AM PT
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I'd say this is then turning into a Problem...

Posted by Dora Raymaker on 04/20/2009 @ 11:26AM PT
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Yes, to 1): in the past few months, I've seen both Aspergers and autism used as a put-down in various blog posts. Most of the time, the writer seemed to mean someone with anti-social or sociopathic tendencies, which goes to show how much they don't get it.

Posted by Barbara Barbara on 04/20/2009 @ 11:23AM PT
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I don't think that it's so odd for AHEADD to put that ad in the Kids Examiner. Their business is to provide help in college - helping autistic kids succeed in college and transition to adulthood easier. And they are a business.....

Parents find out about stuff many times after the fact - so alerting them to AHEADD while their kids are still kids is good business for them.

Posted by Moi Bloggg on 04/21/2009 @ 06:02AM PT
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Dora is committed to improving quality of life for individuals on the autistic spectrum--including herself! She is Co-director of the Academic Autistic Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education and a member of the Autistic Self Advocacy Network's Board of Directors.