Am I late but I just read about Michael Savage's comments on autistic children as well as Justin Timberlake's "shucking and jiving" comment…ugh.

Oh, I heard about Michael Savage's comments. His defense was that his brother had a real mental illness and died at the hands of the "snake pit" that is the NYC mental health system. He's still standing by his vile statements about the kids who basically don't have fathers around to tell them to stop acting like idiots. Funny thing is that with the exception of Jenny McCarthy, every autistic child I know of has a father around and their siblings mature very quickly because they have to.

I don't really know if autism is one illness or several illnesses that are artificially clumped together, but any inference that it's an act is totally insulting to the many autistic people out there and their families. I worked with someone who had Asperger's. There is not one person on earth who would choose to be like that… and that's high-functioning autism.

Thank you for explaining what happened, Daria!