As many viewers of the CW11 News at Ten know, my oldest son, Liam, has autism. When I was reading the news headlines this morning and saw what radio host Michael Savage had said about autism, that it’s a “fraud, a racket..” and that “In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out”… my first reaction was to simply consider the source. Michael Savage is a professional jerk, who puts his extreme ignorance on display for fun and profit; substantial profits, apparently, since he’s purported to be the third most popular radio host in America. What he said about autism is so patently ridiculous, I didn’t think it needed to be dignified with a response.

But as the day went on, and responses WERE coming in from autism organizations and parents of autistic children, I knew I couldn’t sit this one out. So, Mr. Savage, here are some of my thoughts about your foolish and cruel diatribe.

You said: “They (autistic children) don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron… Straighten up. Act like a man.”

My son, Liam, DOES have a father, Mr. Savage. That would be me. Liam is ten years old, and, boy, would I love to say things to him about his condition. One problem: Liam has no vocabulary. He can’t talk, Mr. Savage. He has a brain condition that has no known cause, and no known cure, and one of the ways the condition manifests itself in Liam is that he has no speech, and very little receptive language. That means he can barely understand anything that’s said to him.

“You’ll get nowhere in life,” you said we should tell our autistic children. Well, in some regards, for severely autistic children like mine, that’s partially true. Liam has no skills. It’s doubtful he’ll ever be able to have even a simple, repetitive job, and all signs indicate he’ll need 24/7 care for the rest of his life. But I suppose it comes down to what you mean by “nowhere.” Liam will never measure up to what you apparently see as the hidden potential of these “brats.” But he is a kind and gentle soul, who loves his family and caretakers in whatever way he’s capable of loving. He always does his best, and when he smiles, it’s enough to make the sun come out from behind the clouds. Liam is definitely “somewhere” in life, Mr. Savage, but it’s a place I’m afraid you don’t have the capacity to understand or relate to.

Every autistic child is different. Many, like my son, can’t speak or brush their teeth, and need years to learn to go to the bathroom by themselves. Others can go to college, but are burdened with compulsions and social difficulties and the need for repetitive behaviors that makes it difficult for them to fit in. But even with these higher functioning autistics, your “method” of dealing with them is absurdly harsh and wrong-headed. Do you think people with autism WANT to be that way? Do you think their parents haven’t broken their bank accounts, their hearts, and usually their marriages because they haven’t tried everything under the sun to have their child live as normal a life as possible? You think calling them putzes, morons, idiots, is the way to “snap them out of it?” Your ignorance is breathtaking, Mr. Savage. Read more after the jump.

On Friday, I issued a response to radio jock Michael Savage's controversial comments about autism. With advocacy groups protesting outside radio stations calling for him to be fired, Savage went on the offensive. Hear what he had to say in this exclusive interview with my colleague Peter Thorne.

It’s often been said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. I disagree. I would reserve that distinction for the phrase, “I was taken out of context.” It was the phrase radio host Michael Savage used over and over tonight, refusing to take full responsibility for his toxic comments last week that the vast majority of children with autism are, in reality, brats who haven’t “been told to cut the act out.” He went on to say that what these children needed were to be told to stop acting like morons and idiots.

I responded on this blog Friday night, writing as a parent of an autistic child. I was overwhelmed with the number of people who took the time to read my post, and the hundreds who wrote their own responses. The vast majority of them were, to put it politely, furious with Mr. Savage’s comments. To all those who checked out the blog, my deepest thanks for your thoughts and good wishes.

Monday night, on his program, Savage issued what could best be called the “non-apology apology.” He wasn’t referring, he insists, to the “truly autistic” people, who he now says are “truly ill.” That, he says, was a distortion of the group Media Matters, a liberal-leaning organization that tracks comments from right wing radio and television hosts. Hosts, like Michael Savage, who refers to Media Matters, with typical hyperbole, as “Stalinist.”

But the transcripts of Savage’s comments last week, backed up by audio recordings, show that he said autism is a “fraud, a racket,” being faked in “99 percent of the cases.” He said these children need to be told to not “act like a moron.. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there, crying and screaming, idiot.”

Those are quotes. What possibly could have been the “context” that would change their meaning?” Why not just admit he spoke too harshly, that he exaggerated to make a point, that he needlessly hurt people who deal with “truly autistic” people every hour of their lives? Just easier to say some mean old liberals took the comments “out of context.” Act like a man, indeed.

Since moving my family out of Manhattan to the suburbs last year, I switched from being a subway rider to a Metro North customer. But I still felt a pang of disappointment Tuesday when I heard the MTA is going to propose yet another fare hike for subways and buses. The pang then went ping on the news that subway delays had increased by 24 percent over the past year ending in May. I don’t know who’s responsible for the MTA’s public information strategy, but I would suggest some lag time between poor performance reports and fare hike proposals. It leads one to the conclusion that people are being asked to pay more money for worse service.

Which, of course, is exactly what riders ARE being asked to do, and who can blame a single one of them for being angry about it. First of all, it’s 25-cents more. Sure, that’s not an enormous amount of money, but after a while, these “modest” hikes start nicking straphangers to death. A quarter more this year, a quarter more next year; before long, to paraphrase Senator Everett Dirksen, you’re starting to talk real money. In fact, as recently as 1986, it cost exactly $1 to ride the bus or subway. So in just over 20-years, according to my math, that’s a 100-percent increase. Take it up another quarter next year, and you’ve got an increase of….well, of OVER 100-percent in just over two decades.

And what have we gotten for it? As noted above, more trains run behind schedule than ever before. A heavy rainfall can lock up the entire system. Some stations have been improved, but most of them are, to put it kindly, decrepit. My “home” station when I lived in Manhattan, at 96th Street and Central Park West, was simply disgusting. Filthy, leaky, searing hot in the summertime, and freezing in the winter. And that was Central Park West! I’m guessing stations in more moderate income communities have it much worse.

As New Yorkers, we’re fond of saying we live in the greatest city in the world. But our subway system, while the biggest in the world, is far from the greatest. Pick any city with a subway system of any size, and it’s nicer than New York’s. Paris, London, Moscow… MOSCOW, for God’s sake! The city fathers who are always so concerned about New York’s image in the eyes of the world should spend a little more time underground. If nothing more than making it a matter of pride, it should be a top priority to overhaul everything and rebuild a world class public transportation system.

I know, I know.. it’ll cost billions and billions.. tax dollars are down, etc, etc. We’ve heard it for years. Funny, though, how the city can find the money to build not one but two new mega-baseball stadiums, with a complete overhaul of Madison Square Garden on the drawing board, as well. Sports are enormously important to New York and to the city’s reputation. But last time I looked, a lot more people were riding subways and buses each day than heading out to catch that night’s Yankees game.

Finally, a fare hike in this era of $4.50 per gallon gasoline is especially hard to swallow. What have we always heard we should do to wean us off America’s oil addiction? All together now: USE PUBLIC TRANSPORTATION! Well, in enormous numbers, New Yorkers do just that. And look at the thanks we’re getting. Dig deeper, straphangers and bus riders. You’ll soon be paying more to use a public transportation system that seems to have no long term plan besides….more fare hikes. If this really is the greatest city in the world, we deserve better.

If you type the phrase “political junkies” in Google, you get nearly 600-thousand websites. But when you put, instead: “Define: political junkies,” you get, precisely, none. Zero. And, yes, I made sure all the words were spelled correctly. (Did you know Google was also a dictionary? Actually, it’s almost every dictionary. Type in Define:, then the word or phrase you’re searching for, and you’ll get definitions from just about every published dictionary in several languages. I know it’s probably not cool to still be impressed by Google, but I’m just sayin’..)

Of course, we all know what a political junkie is, even without a formal definition. It’s someone who eats, drinks, sleeps, reads, blogs, reads blogs, and most of all, WATCHES, political news. And in a presidential election year, life is one, big long overdose for a political junkie.

All well and good. Junkies of all stripes should get their fixes. (I don’t speak here, of course, of a true junkie; Google definition: a narcotics addict). I mean people into sports, Star Wars, crossword puzzles, whatever. But with political junkies, especially when it comes to cable television news, the power they wield is is becoming disproportionate.

Britney Spears and Paris Hilton?

Oh, my. This got out of hand MUCH sooner than I expected.

John McCain's new anti-Obama ad, unveiled Wednesday, aims to link the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate to two pop tarts whose names have become synonomous with shallowness, outsized celebrity status, undersized talent, poor driving habits, and dubious parenting skills. Among other things.

When I heard about the ad, I couldn't see how it could be effective for McCain. If you're going to link someone to someone else in the minds of people seeing the ad, there should be some valid points of comparison. Looking at the list above, I just don't see where there's that much common ground between Mr. Obama and Ms.'s Hilton and Spears. Even his detractors would be hard-pressed to say Obama isn't a bright guy, so that rules shallowness out. He's obviously talented in his chosen field of politics, or we wouldn't be having this little talk, would we? I don't think there have been any negative things said about his role as father to his two little girls. I'm not sure if he's a good driver or not.

Obviously the one thing they DO have in common is that they're all famous. But this is a curious tactic for McCain. As our CW11 reporter Chris Glorioso said on the news last night, it puts McCain in the odd position of criticizing his opponent for being popular and well-known. And not well-known because he made a sex tape or didn't wear underpants. He's well-known because he's a U.S. Senator, a powerful speaker, and he's running for president. Read more after the jump.