Hillary and Autism
February 26, 2008 by Kristina Chew, PhD
Filed under Politics, Stereotypes
Writing about unstoppable Obama in the February 14th Huffington Post, writer Barbara Ehrenreich tries to describe his “mysterious and irrational” appeal: “He’s a ‘rock star,’ all flash and no substance, tending dangerously, according to the New York Times’ Paul Krugman, to a ‘cult of personality.’” If he “supposedly goes for the id,” Hillary Rodham Clinton is the “designated valedictorian” who reaches for the more rational, and controlling, ego and super-ego. “She might as well be promoting choral singing in the face of Beatlemania,” Ehrenreich comments, and (in what the February 26th Globe and Mail considers a “gratuitously nasty swipe”), suggests that Clinton’s platform style puts her on the spectrum:
Someone needs to tell her that there are better ways to signal conviction than by raising one’s voice and drawing out the vowels, as in “I KNOW …” and “I BELIEVE …” The frozen smile has to go too, along with the metronymic nodding, which sometimes goes on long enough to suggest a placement within the autism spectrum.
Certainly there’s a bit more to considering someone autistic than the kind of emotional frigidity that Ehrenreich describes in Clinton. It’s not just autistic kids who need social skills classes to “connect.”……
Personally, my vote is for Obama and this simple message: got hope?
Jeff Stimpson
Jill Cornfield