Recent tweet from Age of Autism (AoA):

The link leads to a news story about a couple who donated $1 million to a foundation that trains physicians in developing countries to treat club foot using a non-surgical method developed by late orthopedic surgeon Ignacio Ponseti.

Poor AoA.

They sure have it tough. Not only do they have kids with autism, but it seems like everyone is out to get them:

• First it’s Big Pharma, inventing toxic vaccines that turn our kids autistic, but they don’t care because they make all that money.
• Then we have government and scientists who cover up the vaccines-autism connection because they’re in the pockets of Big Pharma.
• Next come those nasty neurodiversity folks, who don’t want us  to do anything to help our children, because they’re also Pharma shills and/or hate kids.
• Let’s not forget the agencies who want to direct resources at something other than our theory of autism causation, because they want to ignore vaccines as a possibility.
• Don’t leave out Paul Offit and his cronies, who lie about the safety of vaccines because they hate babies and like to eat them.
• And there’s the mainstream media, who never talk about how vaccines cause autism or the treatments that we know in our hearts help our  kids, because they’ve been duped by the scientists (who, as you’ll recall, are in the pockets of Big Pharma.)
• Now we have selfish philanthropists, who donate to their own pet charities instead of ours because they don’t care about autistic people.

Time to come up with a better shtick, AoA. The victim act is getting a tad stale.

Img. from Citizen Kane, Dir: Orson Welles, RKO Pictures, 1941

A number of  comrades have called for a letter-writing campaign to get Age of Autism (AoA) removed from Google News, in part as a reaction to AoA’s recent post (now removed from the site, but viewable here) of a “satirical” photo altered to show a number of pro-vaccine doctors and journalists sitting down to a Thanksgiving feast of roasted baby.

I don’t normally engage in “delisting” campaigns like the one my pals are  calling for, but Kim at Countering Age of Autism brought up a point that I think bears consideration.

Age of Autism can’t decide if it’s a blog or a newspaper.

There is a large gray area between the two, and many blogs try to fulfill  a news reporting role, but ultimately a blog is not held to the same level of journalistic integrity as a newspaper.

AoA bills itself as “The Daily Newspaper of the Autism Epidemic,” and like some other blogs, it has a few of the trappings of a legitimate news site—a masthead-y looking header and a trio of editors with newspaper-like titles.

In his “Letter from the Editor,” Dan Olmstead writes:

“For the most part, the major media in the United States aren’t interested in [our] point of view, they won’t investigate the causes and possible biomedical treatments of autism independently, and they don’t listen to the most important voices – those of the parents. We will do all those things, and more. . . .

“The Age of Autism will be wide-open and transparent in its reporting and commentary on causes and treatments; I am beholden to no individual, organization or fixed point of view. My commitment is to in-depth reporting. I am not a social worker or an autism parent, I’m a journalist drawn to what I called, in my last UPI column, ‘the story of a lifetime.’”

This suggests the editors want Age of Autism to be taken seriously as a source of news and investigative journalism.  If that’s the case, they need to implement meaningful editorial oversight. I’m not an expert, but a few very basic elements of responsible journalism seem conspicuously missing:

• Differentiation between news and editorial or opinion;
• A consistent comments policy, applied  equally to supportive and critical comments;
• Acknowledgment and correction of factual errors.

Moreover, the editors should be held to a higher standard than has been demonstrated thus far.

The Thanksgiving photo was a stunning piece of editorial misjudgment. It was offensive in a number of ways, but without the element of biting commentary or elucidation of uncomfortable truth that can make the offensive a useful part of public discourse. It was simply a schoolyard taunt aimed at people the editors dislike.

It got an unusual (to this observer) amount of negative commentary from readers, and was pulled from the AoA site on or around Dec. 4, without any acknowledgment from the editors.

Even the most astute editors make mistakes now and then. They misjudge the value or impact of a piece, allow slipshod fact-checking, or even allow a story with gaping holes to run. But when the error is so egregious that a piece is pulled after publication, an editor owes his or her readers an explanation and apology.

What does Age of Autism give readers? A big Bronx cheer in the form of a blank page.

In the comments that accompanied the piece, managing editor Kim Stagliano made a crude sexual joke about some subjects of the photo. Despite the AoA comments moderation policy prohibiting “abusive, off-topic… excessive foul language… sexist or other slurs,” the remark was allowed through, and remained, along with similar comments from a few readers, for a period of time before it was deleted.

Off-color, crude, or  other offensive banter is fine on a blog, in cocktail conversation, or other relatively personal interactions, but it shouldn’t have a place in “the nation’s first daily Web newspaper for the environmental-biomedical community.” And it shouldn’t come from the managing editor of the paper writing in that paper’s public forum.

In response to a comment objecting to the piece, frequent commenter “Adrienne” said:

“AoA is an informational blogsite that discusses, among other things, treatment and recovery. If you’re so happy with status quo of your three children’s autism, what in the world are you doing here?”

So, which is it, AoA? A “daily Web newspaper” with all the responsibility that entails? Or an “informational blogsite,” where anything goes?

Seems like even loyal readers are a little confused.

Seriously.

Using the phrase “Drank the Kool-Aid” is facile, dismissive, and utterly offensive.

I am a SF Bay Area denizen old enough to remember the day of the Jonestown Massacre, November 18, 1978, and the horrors that subsequently came to light.

Nine hundred nine people died in the equatorial heat on that day in Guyana. Two hundred eighty-seven of were them children—murdered, many of them by their parents, who were forced to feed them cyanide-laced Kool-Aid (actually Flavor-Aid) and watch as they died in agony.

Whatever our disagreements, none of us deserves to be likened to the perpetrators of that massacre; nor do the murdered children of Jonestown deserve to be used as a cheap metaphor to be hurled at opponents in a debate.

“SEC. 265. LIMITATION ON ABORTION FUNDING

a) In General.—No funds authorized or appropriated by this Act (or an amendment made by this Act) may be used to pay for any abortion or to cover any part of the costs of any health plan that includes coverage of abortion, except in the case where a woman suffers from a physical disorder, physical injury, or physical illness that would, as certified by a physician, place the woman in danger of death unless an abortion is performed, including a life-endangering physical condition caused by or arising from the pregnancy itself, or unless the pregnancy is the result of an act of rape or incest.”[Emphasis mine]

The text above, from the first paragraph of the so-called Stupak Amendment to the healthcare reform bill that passed the House last Saturday, demonstrates the moral elasticity of the political wing of anti-abortion forces.

If, as anti-abortion activists tell us, life begins at conception, and all human organisms enjoy the inalienable right to life, why do we make exceptions based on the circumstances under which that life came into existence?

The simple answer is, of course, political expediency. Anti-abortion politicos believe—probably correctly—that no bill containing language prohibiting all abortions could garner enough support to pass.

This stance, while politically astute, belies the principles many of the same anti-abortion activists claim when they say they could not, in good conscience, support any federal healthcare reform bill that included provisions for abortion, no matter how much such a bill would improve access to healthcare for millions of Americans.

The Stupak Amendment baldly proclaims that, for these same activists, the  need to punish women for having consensual sex outweighs the importance of protecting all human life. If conception occurs, the product merits protection if it is the consequence of a woman’s choice, regardless of her feelings about the pregnancy. The embryo’s right to life trumps the woman’s right to control her body, or to protect her emotional well-being.

However, according to the amendment, the rights equation changes according to the degree of agency the woman enjoys during the act of conception. The woman’s emotional well-being and right to physical integrity supersedes the embryo’s right to life only when conception occurs through no fault of her own.

In other words, a woman who is the victim of rape or incest does not “deserve” punishment in the form of an unwanted pregnancy, but a woman who chooses to have sex does. Thus, implies the Stupak Amendment, the protection afforded the embryo should be a result of its mother’s sexual agency rather than its inherent human rights.

The Stupak Amendment is a cynical insult both to women in general, and to those who oppose abortion based on a true belief in the sanctity of human life.

Img: oindypoint/Flickr

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark  our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved, and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

~ Lt. John McCrae (1915)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!—An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound’ring like a man in fire or lime…
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He  plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil’s sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

~ Wilfred Owen (1917)

The two conflagrations that flung the entire world into the cataclysms of war have given us their own dreadful poetry:

Cambrai. Caporetto. Flers. Gallipoli. Jutland. The Marne. Masurian Lakes. Mons.  Passendaele. The Somme. Tannenburg.  Verdun. Vimy Ridge. Ypres…

Anzio. Ardennes. The Atlantic. Belorussia. Berlin. Britain. The Bulge. Donbass. Dunkirk. El Alamein. Guadalcanal. Guam. Kiev. Kursk. Lenningrad. Leyte. Manchuria. Market-Garden. Midway. Monte Cassino. Moscow. Normandy. North Caucusus. Okinawa. Peleliu. Rzhev-Vyazma. Saipan. Seelow Heights. Smolensk. Stalingrad. West Ukraine.

Today we remember and give thanks to the flowers of these, and all the other fields that are nourished with the blood of heroes.

Sesame Street debuted on PBS 40 years ago today.

It broke new ground in children’s television in a number of important ways. It was one of the first shows that didn’t talk down to kids; it presented both educational and cultural topics with age-appropriate humor, that often contained a contemporary social reference or two designed to amuse adults. But it was never snarky. It didn’t assume kids were little adults, but it also never treated them like little morons, either.

It was, as far as I know, one of the first truly integrated shows; one that didn’t make a BIG DEAL out of it. Sesame Street showed black, white, Latino, Asian and disabled kids and adults, living, working and playing together without feeling the need to comment on it. It was just so normal.

Sesame Street applied the same calm rationality to its treatment of some serious topics, like death and adoption, which it addressed without the coyness or condescension that still plagues children’s programming.

Lots of contemporary children’s programming condescends to kids by either attempting to “connect” with them via pop-culture references and kiddie-rock music. Alternately, they try to “improve intelligence” and “elevate” kids with  classical music and art—as if it were some kind of mental castor oil, to clean out all that nasty pop culture in their little heads.

Not Sesame Street. It presented arts and culture as a natural and essential part of children’s experience, and didn’t attempt to differentiate between “high” and “low” culture. It presented all kinds of great stuff, from ballet to hip-hop, with the distinct idea that kids could decide what they liked without any kind of adult commentary on what was “good” or merely “good for them.”

I could sing the praises of Sesame Street for pages, but instead, I’ll leave you with some of my favorite Sesame moments, culled from an old blog post.

Enjoy!

Nevertheless, a few contemporary singers have flouted the conventional image of divas and divos, recognizing, perhaps, that a guest appearance on Sesame Street is the highest honor that can be accorded a performer, cementing their celebrity in the bedrock of popular culture.

So here, for your delectation, is Opera Sesame:

American mezzo-soprano Denyce Graves sings a variation on the Habañera from Bizet’s Carmen.

Trivia: You may recognize the glamorous Ms. Graves as one of the performers who joined President Obama in singing “Happy Birthday” to Ted Kennedy recently.

Legendary mezzo-soprano Marilyn Horne sings “C is for Cookie” decked out in full full Aida regalia.

Trivia: Ms. Horne supplied the singing voice for Dorothy Dandridge in the 1954 film Carmen Jones.

Prolific bass Samuel Ramey sings a “letter-perfect” rendition of the “Toreador Song” from Bizet’s Carmen.

Trivia: Despite being perhaps the most famous bass of the past quarter-century, Ramey is just a small-town boy at heart. Born and raised in Colby, KS (pop. 5,450), which reportedly erected a sign bearing the legend “Birthplace of Samuel Ramey,” Ramey had never even seen an opera until he was in one.

Über-soprano Renée Fleming counts off to the tune of “Caro nome” from Verdi’s Rigoletto.

Trivia: Last year, Fleming became the inspiration and public face of a new perfume named (what else?) “La Voce.”

Placido Flamingo was a recurring character on Sesame Street. Here he meets his namesake, Plácido Domingo (aka The Second Tenor) for a strange little duet.

Trivia: In the1970s, tenor Carlo Casutta replaced Domingo in a San Francisco performance of Verdi’s Otello. Years later, Domingo returned the favor in spectacular style, flying in to San Francisco at the last minute to replace an ailing Casutta in the same role. Patrons waited patiently, receiving regular updates on the super-tenor’s progress across the country (“He’s over Denver”) and were rewarded when the curtain rose–three hours late–on one of the world’s greatest singers in his signature role.

Popera tenor Andrea Bocelli pays a visit to Elmo, turning his signature tune “Con te partirò” into a lullaby, and demonstrating how remunerative it can be to develop a machine-gun vibrato.

Trivia: Despite his blindness (due to congenital glaucoma) Bocelli has appeared in seven staged operas.

Watching one of my favorite movies the other night, I was struck by a mysterious sense of familiarity. I’d seen this scene played out before,  but not in the context of the Monty Python oeuvre.

Then it dawned on me.

What does this classic bit of comedy remind you of?

Photo: homyox/stock.xchng

So the the majority of voters in Maine have decided that certain civil rights should be based upon the collective chromosomal makeup of the pairs of its citizens wishing to exercise those rights.

This issue is destined to be argued, with significant expenditures of individual and taxpayer monies, over and over again in the next few years. It is quite likely to end up in the Supreme Court, as have other civil rights issues.

Let’s all just save our time, money, and breath, and decide that the term “marriage” has no legal meaning.

Marriage means different things to different people, and my definition isn’t necessarily your definition. Currently, all of the following scenarios meet the legal definition of marriage:

• A man and woman who have filed the requisite paperwork and made vows in front of legal witnesses in a church—presided over by a member of the clergy;
• A man and woman who have filed the requisite paperwork and made vows in front of legal witnesses almost anywhere—presided over by anyone empowered by the state to do;
• A man and a woman who have undergone any of the above, but do not love one another;
• A man and a woman who have undergone any of the above, but do not live together;
• A man and a woman who have undergone any of the above, but do not intend to have children;
• A man and a woman who have undergone any of the above, but engage in sexual relations with other parties;
• A man and a woman who have undergone any of the above, one or both of whom who have been legally married to others any number of times, provided they have also undergone the necessary legal steps to dissolve previous marriages.

While all of these scenarios meet the legal definition of marriage, some do not meet the definitions held by various religions. Some of them do not meet my personal definition of marriage.

Marriage, as a legal entity, is a contract. And while the state places certain limits on who may enter into contracts, I am aware of no precedent for prohibitions based on the gender of the parties. So let’s call the legal state of “marriage” what it is—a domestic partnership—regardless of the gender of its participants, and make it available to any two individuals who would normally be entitled to form such a partnership.

It’s time to return “marriage” to its rightful place: the hearts of individuals.

Photo: Sheila Rock

On the off chance that my fellow opera-loving readers (both of you) are not also consumers of “men’s” magazines, I’m quick-blogging an item you might have missed.

Mezzo-soprano extraordinaire Joyce DiDonato is included in Esquire magazine’s current list of “sexy women of 2009” (she’s #14 in the slide-show.)

Now, I happen to think lots of opera singers are sexy, but until recently it seems my tastes have not been shared by the conventional connoisseurs of pulchritudinous womanhood, and it is especially rare to see a mezzo-soprano  feted for her feminine charms, given their customary relegation to the realms of “witches, bitches and britches.”

What evidently grabbed the attention of Esquire’s arbiters of female sexual appeal was DiDonato’s tough-gal gig as Covent Garden’s Rosina (Il barbiere di Siviglia), when she carried on with the show after fracturing her leg. She went on to finish the run on four wheels rather than two legs.

Bravi! to Esquire’s editors for recognizing that sexy isn’t just full lips, big boobs and a propensity for adopting children from Africa/marrying superstar footballers/proclaiming one’s willingness to have sex with other women—it can and does include qualities like:

• Talent
• Dedication
• Humor
• Humility
• Warmth
• Gratitude

Qualities Joyce DiDonato has in spades.

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Img. courtesy Gray cells/Flickr

I’ve been thinking about the apparent permeation of anti-vaccination attitudes into mainstream culture, and how the scientific community and its supporters could better combat it.

What if we were to create a group similar to the Union of Concerned Scientists, focused on vaccination?

One of the biggest problems we face is popular mistrust of government and medical organizations, who are perceived to be in the pockets of “Big Pharma” vaccine-makers, and of the occasional and lonely high-profile pro-vaccination scientist, like Paul Offit, who get vilified and effectively smeared by anti-vaccination groups as pharma shills.

A coalition of scientists, with expertise in areas related to vaccination, not funded by pharmaceutical companies, with complete transparency regarding potential COIs of its leadership and members (such as pharmaceutical company funding of members’ research projects) might bring sufficient authority and gravitas to become an important, independent voice in the vaccine discussion.

Whatever its shortcomings, the Union of Concerned Scientists seems to be a force to be reckoned with on global climate change, and might serve as a useful model for addressing public perception of scientific issues.

I recognize, of course, that there are already a number of excellent independent writers, bloggers, journalists, as well as organizations like Every Child By Two, the Immunization Action Coalition, and Voices for Vaccines, who  present science-based vaccination information to the public, and do it very well, but many of these suffer from their relatively small reach, and (once again) the perception of undue pharmaceutical company influence.

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