Wampum

It Is All Atrios’ Fault

Coming home today, my wife “asked” me to come into the office where my computer is located. The tone of her request made clear that “right now” was the appropriate time. Upon arriving, I saw Bobby playing with my computer (which is not at all unusual) and my wife standing with her hand on her hip, her body language making clear that I had some ‘splaining to do. “Listen to this”, she said. I listened and decided to chose the best option open to me.

“It’s not my fault” I quickly began. “Well, exactly whose fault is it?” she asked. I thought for a moment and said, “It’s Laura Ingraham’s fault.” “We don’t listen to the GOP Fembots” she said. “Well, well, it’s really Atrios’ fault,” I stammered. “Is that your story?” she asked. “And I am sticking to it,” I concluded.

As she left the room, Bobby in tow, I sat down to write this post to prove that it really wasn’t my fault. It really, really was all Atrios’ doing.

Before I tell of Atrios’ dastardly deed, I need to explain a few things about full spectrum autistics and communication. Bobby is almost nine and has very limited speech. He will say a few words with intent to communicate, such as “please” when he wants something. He will occasionally identify numbers or letters by their name. He has a few other things he will say with intent but not many. His verbal communication is really very limited.

Bobby, of course, has other ways to communicate. He uses gestures and pointing a lot. He has a talking device that allows him to turn a knob and press a button to have the machine say any of 160 different words or phrases. He will use the machine to “say” multiple word sentences like “May I have some more juice, please?” He will use the machine when highly motivated but not yet for everyday communication.

Bobby also has a lot of cards that contain both the word for and a picture of an object. He will select the card and hand it to an adult to request the item. He knows what a large number of such cards mean, and will use them when motivated. All in all, we got along pretty well but we very much want Bobby to learn to communicate verbally.

That is not to say that Bobby does not “talk.” He is constantly saying things. We can understand a fair amount of what he says. It is just that such “talk” is not really an effort to communicate.

Bobby loves to play audio tapes, video tapes, and computer games. He does not play the tapes straight through but will select a small portion, and listen to that portion over and over, hundreds of times. Over time, he learns to reproduce the sounds he has heard. His reproductions include the background noises, the sound of the tape player rewinding and any other sounds repeated in the selected portion. The professionals call that “echoalia” and distinguish it from speech.

Bobby’s reproduction of the sounds comforts him and is part of his self stim routines. He also delights in having other people understand what he is saying and repeat it back to him. For instance, currently Bobby likes to say “take your second right past Mars, on the Magic School Bus.” He is also fond of “We’re a crackerjack brigade, on a pachyderm parade” from the Disney movie “The Jungle Book.” Once he learns to reproduce the sound of a tape segment, he likes to say the phrase and repeat the sound over and over, sometimes for hours at a time.

What does any of that have to do with Atrios?

Atrios is always on the alert for hypocrisy. As a result of the Janet Jackson incident, some TV and radio personalities have been feeling some heat from the culture cops. In particular, Clear Channel has dropped Howard Stern in some areas allegedly for using some offensive language on the radio. Others have noted that Stern did not get the boot until he began criticizing the current administration. An example of a right wing radio personality getting by with behavior that resulted in punishment for a Bush critic would lend credibility to the idea that Stern was dropped more for his Bush criticisms than for bad language.

Atrios, of course, found just such an example. That is why he is the Beatles of blogging.

On her radio show, Laura Ingraham was talking about Tucker Carlson interviewing Brittany Spears. Another voice chimes in asking “Did Tucker get to **** her?” If you can’t fill in the blank, and I know you can, you can click through to hear it yourself.

That exchange, apparently, went out over the air. I am not aware of any action taken against Ingraham or her show by the FCC or the culture cops. When Atrios posted the link, I bookmarked it as I was thinking about blogging the issue if no FCC investigation occurred.

When I entered the office, Bobby was playing the Ingraham segment over and over and had been doing so for a couple of hours. Deb knew that he was playing on the computer but had no idea what he was playing, and replaying and replaying as he learned to repeat it. Not the entire segment, of course. He was only interested in the part that rhymed.

We expect a call from his school by mid-day tomorrow after he shows off his new skill.

Now, it seems clear that the bulk of the blame should fall on Atrios for two reasons. First it was at his site where I originally found the link. Sure, I bookmarked it and left the link in an unprotected file on a computer that I knew Bobby used. Nonetheless, my fault is miniscule when one considers the second reason that it must be Atrios’ fault.

He is anonymous and I am not.

Posted by Dwight Meredith at March 29, 2004 09:08 PM | TrackBack