You may not yet have heard of Asperger's syndrome. But you can be sure that someone will sooner or later offer it to you as an excuse for his own bad behaviour, for it is the height of hypochondriac fashion in New York.

I've been trying to understand what turned my country into a thrashing autistic monster in the past few years, and unfortunately, if you want to understand America, you've got to learn a little about radical Protestantism.

In a nation of eight million socially impaired Rain Mans unable to make human connections, at least everyone involved can boast they're a very good driver.

This one's autistic / This one stopped thinking / This one just left an asylum / This one sitting alone / Fodder for the big adults / Living in a padded cell... ('Parody author did not authorize comments for this parody.')

On a recent segment of ABC's "Politically Incorrect," a person on the show announced, "Dogs are like retarded children." Guest Sarah Ferguson, the former Duchess of York, booed at this observation and declared: "They [retarded children] have a heart and a soul." The person snapped back: "They have a heart and a soul and a brain that's retarded." A hue and cry in the special-needs community has erupted over these remarks. Whoever uttered them should never be invited back on "Politically Incorrect." Unfortunately, the person who made these remarks was the host, Bill Maher. This kind of slur against the disabled sounds like it could have come from some ignorant bigot, not from a smart guy from New York who graduated from Cornell. Sure, Maher has had a pattern of trying to drum up interest in his show with shocking statements that get him publicity. For example, he ranted about the extensive media coverage of John F. Kennedy Jr.'s death and said that Barbara Bush "has always been a b----." But his remarks about retarded children hit a new low.

(Limbaugh) made fun of the name, continued to pronounce it "asBerger's", and made fun of shyness being a "syndrome." "I would assume that copious quantities of adult beverages might lessen the strain of Asperger's=..."

Blogger's commentary on Netizen "Mac Diva"'s insults and harassment of another Netizen, Natasha, who has Asperger Syndrome.

It may have been ODS Deputy Martin Riman who labeled the prime minister a paranoid autistic, but anti-Spidla members of the CSSD laughed at and repeated the derogatory description -- privately, of course.

Who's worse? Nike, for producing the ad, or Backpacker magazine, for running it? Before the anti-PC crowd starts calling crips 'thin-skinned,' try substituting some racist or homophobic description in place of the 'drooling, misshappen' stuff.

Some of Spidla's opponents, mocking his vague and muted statements, called him autistic. "He had a bad relationship with members of our deputies group in Parliament," Gross said in a June 27 interview with Czech TV.

Medics treating a dying autistic teenager were told by a doctor "let's get the trough out and feed it", his family claims. He was also ignored by nurses and a vomit-filled container was left next to his bed for 48 hours.

Among the more popular medical slang terms it says are: CTD (Circling the Drain � a patient about to die), GLM (good looking mum), GPO (good for parts only), TEETH (tried everything else, try homeopathy) and UBI (unexplained beer injury).

She describes having a child with autism as torture, intimates that parents with such children have no life, that siblings are losing out/suffering, and compares taking a child with behavior difficulties in public, to doing the same with a drunk.

The 19 November 2005 issue of British Medical Journal included a brief essay in its Soundings column, Dr. A Will See You Now, by Colin Douglas (pen name of Edinburgh geriatric specialist Dr. Colin Currie). The essay begins enigmatically, then takes a marked downhill slide into all-too-familiar stereotypical territory..

Dr. Phil highlighted a family whose nine-year-old son was rubbing his feces on the walls of the house, torturing animals, acting violently toward his siblings and was prone to intense tantrums. Dr. Phil informed the parents that their son did not have a behavior problem -- that his problems were the result of poor parenting. He continued by informing the parents that their child had 9 of the 14 characteristics of a serial killer.

Professor Charles Taylor of McGill University, our foremost philosopher, has often taught south of the border... Taylor has coined a new phrase: Great Power Autism. America has a learning and behaviour disorder. It cannot comprehend the complicated world. It cannot make sense of what non-Americans are saying. It has a skewed view of them.

In which Nike urges you to buy their shoe lest you become 'a drooling misshapen non-extreme-trail-running husk of my former self, forced to roam the earth in a motorized wheelchair with my name embossed on one of those cute little license plates...'

Why do they have to make their "hacker" sound like some kind of autistic retard? The visual picture their descriptions conjure up is of this guy rocking back and forth in his chair as he watches the kernel compile...

Now lest you find it doubtful that a guy with an autistic-like/schizophrenic-like mental illness could make it all the way to med school, one of our psychiatry attendings had an anecdote about a psychiatry resident...

Shigeru Ishiba apologized Friday for saying earlier this week that the Self-Defense Forces are sometimes referred to as "the autistic forces," apparently referring to the fact that the SDF has not always made the best job of communicating its activities

America's savage treatment of innocent children has these and other dimensions. There is plenty of denial, covering up and papering over the deaths, the neurological damage, the learning disabilities, including the huge recent increase in cases of autism.

Dr. Laura draws only on her capacity to make moral and ethical judgments and apparently on no other source of morality outside herself. Her statements are not clear applications of moral principles, nor of rules, nor of instances of a law's relevance.

In which the author mocks Temple Grandin in a grossly offensive manner -- so offensive that no excerpt will be provided on this site. Opportunity is offered to reply..

The breakdown of communication in relationships due to the immoral, commercial, consumeristic, throwaway society in which we live, has nothing to do with the neurological disorder of Autism. Fatherlessness and resulting inherited fear is a huge problem in all societies today, however the deterioration of the family unit has nothing to do with Autism Spectrum Disorder. To claim that you know what will correct and restore full mental health to anyone suffering from Autism is misleading, irresponsible and evil in itself. You are profiting on the elaboration and exploitation of all the things that God has directed us not to JUDGE, but to refrain from.

Mac Diva wrote a post comparing Aspergers to psychosis (which is ridiculous). She also attacked parents of autistic children by writing that such parents have an "entitlement complex" because autism affects whites at a greater rate than others

...there is persistant denial by American society of the causes of damage to millions of children who are thus traumatized and brain damaged as a consequense of cruel treatment by parents who are otherwise too busy to love and care for their babies.

Most of us, whatever our line of work, have experienced the day-to-day grind of dealing with a consistently exasperating co-worker. Now imagine that person with lifetime tenure. I suspect, you'd prefer not to.

Hector writes that I am "describing the inner world of a deeply disturbed person". High-functioning autism and AS are not "deep disturbances" -- they are disabilities with a biological cause.

Quoting Rush Limbaugh: "I would assume that copious quantities of adult beverages might lessen the strain of Asperger's syndrome..."."if you have Asperger's syndrome you are condemned to being boring in social situations..."

Autistics such as Spock find it hard to distinguish people from things - rather like the Prime Minister and premiers at last week's Council of Australian Governments meeting which authorised the use of surplus in-vitro fertilisation embryos for research.

(Mac Diva) has mocked individuals with Asperger's, autism and mental handicaps and berated parents of autistic children... Bigotry against the disabled is no different than any other form of bigotry and should be shunned by all of us.

I once sat near one on a train. He was listening to a tape he had made of train numbers, and by constantly rewinding and forwarding the tape, was crossing the details off in a special little book. I rest my case.

Remember that crazy professor you had at college - you know, the guy who could calculate to three decimal points in his head but had problems matching his own socks? There's one on every campus; often more than one.

It was meant to be an act of inclusion. It backfired. And now the yearbook staff at Birmingham's Seaholm High School has been accused of being insensitive because of a two-page spread that features only students with disabilities.