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My Anti-Anti-Vaccination Post That Wasn’t

I had been writing a post about the growing anti-vaccination movement in my head for the past few days. I was figuring out how to structure my argument about why parents who decide not to vaccinate their kids against preventable diseases like measles, mumps, polio and whooping cough are endangering not just their own kids, but our society as a whole. Then I got into an online argument with the husband of a family friend on the topic and I’ve decided to take a pass. Not because he convinced me that not-immunizing his kids was the right choice, scientifically, no.

I’m not going to bother because it’s obvious there’s really no point. Anti-vax parents are just as dead-set in their belief system as flat earthers or climate deniers. They tend to ignore the bulk of the science as well as the overwhelming good vaccines have done that say immunizations are not only safe, but save thousands upon thousands of lives each year. At the same time, they are motivated in their deep-seated belief by the well being of their child, which is the first tenant of any good parent, and so I cannot fault them for that. But trying to convince them, in any way, that their decision not to protect their children against potentially deadly diseases was the wrong one will fail each and every time. This is a conclusion that the CDC also recently reached themselves which spells trouble for any hope of stopping the very recent rise of preventable diseases in the United States.

The more I think about it, the only way I see to slow the growing anti-vacination movement is to discover the true cause (and eventually the cure) for autism. The ever-increasing numbers of children diagnosed with autism in this country is the catalyst that fuels these parents and rightly so. Autism is a scary neurological condition that places heavy burdens on both the afflicted and their families. Until the true causation for the condition is known, vaccines will continue to be blamed, and more and more outbreaks of preventable diseases will occur. We can (and should) pass laws that mandate vaccinations but even those won’t completely work because there will always be parents who will willingly break such a law to “safeguard” their child. Unfortunately, the cause(s) of autism may never be found and that, more than anything else, is what scares me most.

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Yaz and I

They say kids can be cruel and that’s never more true than when you have an unusual name. Growing up, I knew my parents had named me after my grandfather, Gedeon Oliver Maheux. That being said, it was a little tough for me to appreciate my family heritage when neighborhood kids would call me all manor of strange and hurtful names. At some point in our lives we all get called mean things and if we’re lucky, it ends up building character instead of warping our “fragile little minds”.

But by the time I was seven, I disliked my name so much that when my mom and dad sent me off to 2 weeks of Catholic summer camp, I insisted they register me with my middle name of Paul instead of Gedeon. I had the brilliant idea that I would hide behind my dad’s name to avoid the inevitable onslaught of ridicule that would come with a cabin full of strange, new kids. All our clothes had to have name tags sewn on them for laundry identification, so for two weeks both my clothes and I were known as “Paul Maheux”. The clever charade worked great except that camp councilors thought I was going deaf since they’d call out “Paul!” and I wouldn’t even so much as turn my head in response.

Then when I was eleven years old, my father took me to my first big league baseball game. Living in New Hampshire, naturally it was the Boston Red Sox I saw that fateful day in 1980. Like most children, I can easily remember the first time I emerged from the concession tunnel to see the Green Monster. Although I had played baseball a bit at school, this was the first time I can honestly say I became interested in it. I sat with my father and watched the game unfold in unassuming fashion until a strange man took the field and the place went positively nuts.

Not being familiar with the players or the history of the Red Sox, I couldn’t understand why this scrawny guy was being greeted with such thunderous applause. Who was this man? What had he done to deserve this? Then the PA system blasted his name and quite literally changed my life. The announcer simply said one word as the scoreboard brightly flashed it over and over – “Yaz!”. Every fan in Fenway knew him to be Carl Yastrzemski, the legendary hitter and outfielder that fans lovingly referred to as Yaz. By the time I saw him that night, his profesional career was winding down, but I didn’t know that. All I knew was this man was loved and respected by thousands of people and to top it off he had a strange name, just like me.

After that fateful game, you couldn’t call me Paul if you wanted to. I was proud to be called Gedeon, but my smile grew if you called me simply Ged. I realized that it wasn’t a bad thing to have a unique name, in fact, just the opposite. Try a Google search for “Paul” and then one for “Gedeon” and you’ll know exactly what I mean. As I grew older I wore my name with pride and thanked my parents for setting me apart from the crowd. Today, I wouldn’t have it any other way and I have my family and a player named Yaz to thank for it.

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A License To Hate

Sometimes I almost feel pity for conservative radio personality Michael Savage. For some reason the man seems positively wracked with hatred for his fellow human beings. Over his career he’s managed to spew some of the most foul words that anyone has ever heard, and get paid while doing it. Something seriously fucked up must have happened in his childhood to help explain how he can look down on so many of us. From blacks and jews, to gays, liberals, muslims and more, Savage has done his best to ensure intolerance has a place on public airwaves.

His latest attack came in the form of kids with autism and the parents that coddle them. On the July 16th edition of his syndicated radio show, The Savage Nation, the host put forth this cruel, but not surprising theory for what lies behind children plagued with autism:

“Now, the illness du jour is autism. You know what autism is? I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That’s what autism is.

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, “Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, idiot.”

So in Michael Savage’s world, the debilitating illness of autism is simply an act. A racket that parents encourage their kids to partake in so that they can collect welfare checks. Coming from any sane person, this stance would be met with abject ridicule and perhaps even a pink slip, but because of who the messenger is (a right-wing, ultra-conservative radio host), his opinion is allowed to stand unchallenged. Of course the First Amendment gives him the right to speak his mind, but I’m more concerned with why anyone owning a radio network would want this kind of hate speech, directed specifically at children, to be associated with their business. Do ratings unilaterally trump morals? Are ethics only for those with small market share?

Back in January I posted about Brave New Film’s efforts to get Savage’s sponsors yanked. Local radio talk show hosts Brad & Britt defended Savage’s right to say what he says. I’m looking forward to tomorrow’s show to see what, if anything, Brad & Britt will have to say. Will they once again come to his defense and if so, why do they hate “the children” so much?

In the end, I think Savage’s latest tirade will turn out to be a huge miscalculation. History teaches us that you can offend, ridicule and insult minorities without so much as people raising an eyebrow, but speak ill-will of children, and you might as well start World War III. I wouldn’t be surprised when all is said and done, it was the parents of autistic children (and parents in general) that finally revoke Michael Savage & Clear Channel’s license to hate.

UDPATE: Today’s show (7.22.08) of Brad & Britt tackled the Savage question, and to their credit, the radio pair seemed pretty sensitive to the kids and their parents. However, I was surprised by the sheer number of callers who phoned in to agree with Savage. Throughout all of this, there seemed to be a point that Britt in particular wanted to make — can you get away with anything as a radio talk show host? Is there a line that shouldn’t be crossed? It’s funny because this is exactly the point I was trying to make in my last post about Savage’s hateful speech. A bit sad that it took the topic of innocent children for the pair to come to this realization, and I’m not sure if FM Talk’s support of a local Autism charity event is influencing their stance, but I’ll take them at their word.

In related news the radio station Super Talk Mississippi has announced that “effective immediately, Michael Savage and his Savage Nation Radio Show has been canceled.” Glad to see that ethics sometimes trumps ratings.

UPDATE II: Savage has been dropped from another radio station, this time in Cleveland, OH. Station manager Mark Jaycox was quoted as saying: “This guy’s a knucklehead, and I want to get rid of him.” I always did like Cleveland.