Nor would I — as I hope was conveyed by my comment to your most recent post. But after all I had learned over the past week, the pictures’ implications were just too familiar. I’ve had a bellyfull of how so many of these flesh-pressing networks do business. Growing up in proximity to such things, I learned early to watch for elevated smarm as precursor to some looming injustice. Telling ourselves over and over that not everyone is like that may be soothing, but it doesn’t fix anything.

But then, I expect you’re the last person to be in need of my sermons. Sorry.

:-p

Well, I can and do. When the party’s honorees are Bob and Suzanne Wright I can condemn it. If the Wrights weren’t causing such dangerous consequences for autistic lives by their poisonous cloud of “fear awareness”, I could see your point. However, I don’t find it the least bit coincidental that Koplewicz has taken the Wright’s modus into academia. Why try to reinvent success when you can just copy it. Afterall, he consulted with his colleagues about it before moving forward:-)

As someone who routinely financed hospital expansion projects, I too routinely went to parties (a terrible requirement of the job) where there were clinical directors there pressing the flesh, networking for dollars so to speak. It is a part of their jobs of course. However, if I were at a party where someone was dressed in an offensive costume or was a notoriously offensive person, I wouldn’t pose in pictures with them nor would I make them honorees. I’ve been to plenty of parties where children with cancer attended and spoke, where children who were saved in a NICU spoke etc. I wonder if any autistic people speak at these gala’s for Koplewicz and the Wright’s, especially ones who don’t care much for their rhetoric.

Hasn’t TAAP had a few of these types of parties where autistic artists were there displaying their art? How refreshing and a better example than a bunch of pompous “do-gooders” who aren’t truly concerned with autistic lives but are simply there to show “they care”.

Really, let’s be honest here, parties that appear in “social diaries” really have one purpose, and that purpose is so all the “masters of the universe” as Tom Wolfe so eloquently described this social class, to pat each other on the back and exchange happy talk about what wonderful and charitable work they do, while at the same time paying their accountant to find any nebulous tax shelters to limit their reported income (the wife is a cpa). I wonder if the NY Social Diary would consider taking pictures at Autscape? Afterall, that’s a social gathering as well.

As a head of a big research center, he’s the chief one in charge of pressing the flesh for money, and that means doing as many of those fund raising dinners as you can.

The actions of this campaign disgust me, but I’m hoping Koplewicz will quickly see the error of his ways, reconnect with his inner ethical self, and reverse course.

Alternatively, we’ll get to see whether the blogosphere will be able to seriously damage NYU.

Joe

“about the autistic children who run into traffic and die because they do not understand the dangers of automobile traffic. There have been reported incidents in the past year. I almost lost my own son that way a few years ago.”

It might be good to work on such a program, if your teachers and therapists have not already started this. I am fortunate to live at a time and in a place when and there are teachers who (as there were not in the past; it is unclear what the fate of my son would have been 50 years ago or if we lived in a different place) are able to teach him such basic skills. (And some of these teachers can be found in “New Brunswick South” aka New Jersey— which everyone loves to make fun of; you are in good company!). ABA cannot teach everything, but it has been a good way to start on these things for my son. ABA can also be incorrectly applied and this has unfortunately happened to my son.

One often wonders, what if all the funds for those glitzy fundraisers (with giftbags etc.) were spent on ….. autistic persons.

As I am sure that you are also aware, even in the best case scenario where access to the best educational programs and the money to pay so are available, that outcome is variable. (For divergent theories and statistics that are even worse, please see the literature on eating disorders.) So the campaign as created was somewhat disingenuous, unless NYU has discovered a pill to eliminate the core diagnostic symptoms of autism and teach social and self-help skills. Psychotropic drugs to manage severe symptoms is not exactly breaking news but carry the possibility of significant side effects as part of the risk/benefit.

Last night, on surfing the cybersphere, I noted that there was a broad slice of people who found the campaign offensive, and for similar reasons. I suspect that after the NYT story that NYU may be getting mail from many of the constituencies identified in the billboards.

And with the Wrights, no less. *sigh* So what we have here is one big high-rollers club who get their keeping-up-with-the-Joneses money by selling their face-value to megacorporations whose sole aim is to get more kids drugged. And our beloved Dr. Kopout is a charter member.

I think I’ve got the big picture now. No wonder he’s not listening to us. Who wants a photo-op with some random sicko? Have my agent get J-Mac on the phone.

(I just got a helluva lot more cynical about this … does it show? *grin* Still, thanks for the link!)