Wednesday, October 15, 2008

Fire_alarmHuffPo: Stagliano Hosed by Leary

Here's my contribution to the Denis Leary controversy on Huffington Post titled, "Hosed by Denis Leary." Pop over and leave a comment, won't you please? Click HERE.

Note: Denis Leary has tried to put out the fire with a statement: HERE.

NEW YORK, Oct 15, 2008 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Denis Leary issued the following statement today in response to comments about his new book, "Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid." The people who are criticizing the "Autism Schmautism" chapter in my new book "Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid" clearly have not read it. Or if they have, they missed the sections I thought made my feelings about autism very clear: that I not only support the current rational approaches to the diagnoses and treatment of real autism but have witnessed it firsthand while watching very dear old friends raise a functioning autistic child. The point of the chapter is not that autism doesn't exist -- it obviously does -- and I have nothing but admiration and respect for parents dealing with the issue, including the ones I know. The bulk of the chapter deals with grown men who are either self- diagnosing themselves with low-level offshoots of the disease or wishing they could as a way to explain their failed careers and troublesome progeny. Of course, this entire misunderstanding can be easily avoided simply by doing one thing -- reading the book. Taking one or two sentences out of context -- especially when it involves an entire chapter devoted to the subject -- is unfair and ill-advised. Too often in this country, everything gets reduced to simple sound bites and very very often those sound bites are not truly representative of an author or artist's point of view. Please give me the benefit of the doubt by reading all of what I wrote before attacking me. SOURCE Denis Leary Copyright (C) 2008 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

7 comments:

Michelle O'Neil said...

And she takes the bait!

; )

Finally! Something both bio-med and ND can agree on. Leary is an ass wipe.

Kim Rossi Stagliano said...

I was CAJOLED into writing the piece. (Does this hook make my mouth look fat?)

Leeann said...

He and Michael Savage belong in the same pasture.

Michelle O'Neil said...

Nothing about you could ever look fat. Except your advance on your book deal. May it be chubby mc chubberson.

Laura said...

Oh, yeah, I'm really going to go buy his book to make sure I have his rant "in context." No thanks, Denis!

Jenny Gardiner said...

sure makes you wonder exactly where the editors were with that chapter. Ummm...if anything could be misconstrued about that, you'd think that the red flag would've be wildly waved back and forth THEN rather than now. I will avoid cynicism and hope that it wasn't left in to stir up attention to the book via controversy...

Anonymous said...

He's a fringe comic whose schtick is non-PC, I don't find it surprising and as a mom with a AS adult son I have seen a lot of 'self-diagnosing' from those who know a little bit about it and have a child giving them problems. I've even seen them trying to 'treat' their child without a diagnosis or telling other parents 'he's autistic' when they have no diagnosis and he patently is not. I get more ticked at the wanton labelling of a child without diagnosis than I do a comic. And for that matter, we have a young man with Aspergers and an IQ of 70 here in jail - he was recruited and coached online by Muslim militants into pulling off an attempted bombing in Exeter. They can't get the real bad guys it seems, they hid themselves well, but he's in jail, as an Aspie, for something he could never have done on his own and doesn't understand the ramifications of - now that makes me mad. I save my ire for the serious issues facing autistic families. Comedians, bah, their deliberate controversies all blow over - anyone remember Andrew 'Dice' Clay?