Bladel: No, that isn't what this is about.

yeah, i know. i admitted elsewhere upthread (to someone's response to my comment) that I had made a false equivalent.

but, it's not this beauty pageant lady's fault she has any degree of autism. she probably had it rougher than most, though there are many who have it rougher than her.

too bad there's no cure for the stupidity of the whole world that sees her and says, see, she's fine, that means your kid is too

doczoidberg: Why are people so eager these days to have something wrong with them?

What? You need a diagnosis of some disorder to feel special, or something???

Existential angst, mostly: terror in the thought that nothing is holding you back, that whatever mistakes you make are entirely your own. Sadly, one common (though destructive) reaction is to search desperately for some reason -anything will do, really- that this might not have been the case: some reason that you couldn't possibly have become more than you are.

Someone remind her when she gets to Vegas that it's illegal to count cards.

coeyagi: oblig

Chicago's very own Hungry Hound, Steve Dolinsky FTW!

I_Am_Weasel: minoridiot: BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome." But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.

Is that like being borderline pregnant?

Only if there is a pregnancy spectrum.

Borderline means not on the spectrum. So this headline should be: "slightly weird, socially awkward girl who everyone just thought was a stuck-up biatch is pageant contestant". BFD.

Isn't that all of them?

Gary Numan, of one-hit wonder "In Cars" fame from the 1980s, was supposedly diagnosed with Asperger's in like 2005 or something. Up till then, everyone just thought he was a difficult, gotta-have-it-my-way asshat. Kind of puts a new spin on his lyrics, though. Maybe there in his car, he really did feel safest of all, cuz he could lock all his doors, in cars.

Hero tag. You're not doing it right.

ZeroCorpse: ***snip***

Ok, this time don't sugar coat it, how do you really feel?

This is why we need a completely different term for these cases.  You tell someone there kid has mild/borderline autism/aspergers (or whatever) and they drop the mild/borderline part and just run with it.

She should try to run for Miss Caaaaaalifooooooooooooooorrrniiiiiiaaaaaaaaaaaaa.

Hawt chick has the disease? Oh them it must be real, not like those fakers

Bladel: BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome."  But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.


"For the longest time I just really wanted to know what was wrong with me," she said. "When I was finally diagnosed I felt like it came too late."
As a parent of a kid who required hundreds of hours of speech therapy just to be able to finish a sentence, people like this really piss me off.

No shiat. I just brought my son back from his speech therapy, and I would like to kick this biatch right in the farking snatch.

You're not autistic, sweetheart, you're just an asshole.

Millennium: BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome."  But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.

To be perfectly fair, that would put her on the autism spectrum, according to DSM-V. That said, this is FOX News; I'm kind of surprised to hear them accepting any definitions beyond the original DSM.

No, actually, it wouldn't. The DSM specifically says "debilitating" in it. If you can prance around the stage in your underpants and give farking media interviews, you aren't autistic.

Egalitarian: Carn: The Angry Hand of God: I am growing so tired about hearing about people with autism, ADD, ADHD, Asperger's, etc. Can't people just stop making up names for these so-called "conditions," and take some responsibility? I get it, you are socially awkward. When I was a kid, that would just mean that you gotten beat up here and there, but you would just go home as the beaten up weird kid, not some completely dysfunctional, Ritalin popping mess with some poorly diagnosed trendy "disease" caused by getting too many vaccinations.

My nephew is autistic for real, not borderline or awkward like this girl. He is making a lot of progress but still has a lot of very serious issues. So, f*ck off..

I assume you are trolling but if not ... the autistic kid I know is in 3rd grade. He still poops his pants constantly with unpleasantly unusual feces. Doesn't speak well, can't answer most questions. Screams "NO" to every request, will say other things over and over and over. Spins objects obsessively. Bangs, hits, throws when upset (which is often). Gets stuck on one thing he's obsessed with for months. His eyes are just a little too far apart to be quite normal, oversized head with a skinny little body. Emotional level is that of a toddler's. He can read and do basic math so we sort of vainly hope it can be turned around and he'll be self-sufficient, but I suspect he'll never be on his own.

You really think this is just a spoiled kid? There's no severe biological/neurological problems going on here???

You should swing by an autism treatment center sometime and just observe kids being picked up and dropped off. It's obvious pretty quickly these kids have real problems on a biological level.

\oh and BTW the kid I describe is getting medical treatment and behavioral therapy, in case anyone is worried we're not doing anything

I know you're responding to the guy before me but I can tell you my nephew had a lot of those behaviors. Still has some but not near as many. He has been on the GFCF diet and went to a special school for autistic kids for a year and a half and the gains he has made have been incredible. I highly recommend passing on the info to the parents. My nephew went from non-verbal to speaking in complete sentences in a matter of weeks when my sister changed his diet. He had a lot of food allergies and poisons built up in his body. It's no the sole cause but in his case it was certainly contributing to his problems.

Oh red hair and blue eyes. Nice!
I like them more when they are crazy, so much more fun.

amindtat: Awkward proportions and spine alignment, no feet, all she needs is breast implants and thigh pouches and she could be a Rob Liefeld creation.

FIFY.

/Liefeld. Ugh.

clydedog: I_Am_Weasel: minoridiot: BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome."  But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.

Is that like being borderline pregnant?

Only if there is a pregnancy spectrum.

Borderline means not on the spectrum. So this headline should be: "slightly weird, socially awkward girl is pageant contestant". BFD.

Came here to say this. By today's standards, I'd easily test positive for Assburgers. I never was a people person, but I spend most of my time at work and communicating little, so I've become far more socially retarded than I ever was. That is, unless I've been drinking, after which you can't shut me up.

Hero tag, subby? I'm near sighted. Where the hell is my hero tag???????????????

serpent_sky: Bladel: "For the longest time I just really wanted to know what was wrong with me," she said. "When I was finally diagnosed I felt like it came too late."
As a parent of a kid who required hundreds of hours of speech therapy just to be able to finish a sentence, people like this really piss me off.

Why? Because nobody else can suffer because they didn't have the same exact hardships your son did?

I have a friend who says "oh, I don't want to complain to you, you have worse problems than I do." And I always say, "and how does that invalidate your problems? You're still hurting and need to vent...."   Same thing here.

Well said and much better so than I could. Suffering isn't a race to see who isn't a game to see who has it worst.

As someone who has been a lifelong sufferer of severe ADHD I often take a similar appoach to you when I encounter those who have only mild-ADHD. Many people get bogged down in being envious of those with less hardships, not realizing the other person is still suffering. Instead of acting like they are imposters or are somehow on easy street because their struggles aren't as hard as mine, I often will listen to and advise them based on my own experiences. What I often find is that because their symptoms are much more mild they have a hard time distinguishing between what is their own fault and what is caused by the ADHD. As this girl in the pageant described, they often don't understand why they can't be normal. They are close but not quite right. They are left feeling like a bit of a stranger but no clue as to what they are doing wrong and why. They often feel like maybe if they tried harder (like their mom/dad/friend/grandparent/etc. always told them) then they would succeed or they feel maybe they are just lazy like everyone tells them. So they spend their life working their ass off to try to reach an unobtainable goal and as a result always failing and feeling like a failure (as well as feeling alone in a crowd).

As for me, like most people with severe ADHD I display some traits of being autistic/aspie as well. Things like processing peoples emotions for me are very binary. I don't get the subtlety of most emotions. So I will miss someone is pissed until they reach a certain level and then I will read it as extremely angry (when likely they are just mad). I also have a difficulty figuring out socially acceptable levels of discomfort. So I tend to be more timid in confrontation because if I am not I can come across as an unreasonable raging asshole. Not because I enjoy being an asshole but because I don't know when its acceptable to push for things and when its time to back off. I just can't read that situation well at all. So I chose to try to not be an asshole. Similarly, I have slightly off speech patters and mannerisms at times that make me a bit quirky. That being said, at least the ADHD part can be someone controlled with medication. Without medication I would likely be a high school drop out (or maybe I would but I wouldn't graduate college) and there is a good chance i would be homeless or living in a housing project; with medication, I currently have an MS in Inorganic Chemistry and am currently a nanotech chemist at a biotech firm.

She is pants on head attractive. Hope she wins.

Bladel: clydedog: I_Am_Weasel: minoridiot: BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome."  But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.

Is that like being borderline pregnant?

Only if there is a pregnancy spectrum.

Borderline means not on the spectrum. So this headline should be: "slightly weird, socially awkward girl is pageant contestant". BFD.

Pretty much this.  Altho I might tack on "trying to garner sympathy points from media & pageant judges"

that about covers it. but don't cover miss montana, she's a babe.

Thunderpipes: Nothing a smack in the face would not cure. 99.5% of all childhood mental illness is just lack of discipline. The rest is full retard.

You know, reading you in the politics threads, I really thought you were that stupid.

Well done to keep me hooked all this time.

BarkingUnicorn: First story I read about her said she had "borderline Asperger's syndrome."  But Fox, of course, had to amp it up a bit.

You mean she's a little bit socially awkward at times? Yeah, I am borderline Aspie too. So are 99% of the people I have ever met.

Overdiagnosis aside, hope she wins. She is lovely and not all plastic like most of them.

SpiderQueenDemon: sprawl15: She has joined the pageant as part of an effort by Miss America Corp. to improve the quality of the answers given during the question portion of the competition.

I could see that. I routinely invite people with autism and similar to dinner parties when I want the conversation to be more interesting.

I work with several kids and adults who are best described as 'on the spectrum,' which ranges from an adult savant who does not speak but can program like a fiend to a little girl with borderline Asperger's who is normal apart from some communication issues and sounding like a TED talk trapped in a kid's body. (One of her favorite subjects is aviation and I've seen her talk with adult pilots and tell them a few things they didn't know, simply because that hyper-detailed knowledge about a fixated subject is so strong with Aspies.) I'm also married to a guy whose official diagnosis is mild Asperger's, but who's come along so much with therapy that unless you really knew what you were looking at, you'd just assume "yep, that's an engineer all right," and my little godson is what's called an A-G, which is Autistic and Gifted.

He did have to have significant therapy as a little bitty kid, didn't speak until age four and a half and still has some serious sound and light-related triggers, but now that he's got his communication basics more or less under control and has a school and folks that understand him, he's the kind of kid who puts on his best suit and attends a Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson lecture like a miniature grad-student. We routinely give him college textbooks as rewards for good behavior or doing all his chores, he's actually succeeded in training his pet pigeon, Mrs. Tesla, to do a few magician-type tricks, and he's possibly the smartest child I've ever met, even if he does have some little quirks like needing to wear earplugs in loud grocery stores or being very attached to a few select items, like his four-color pen, flashlight and TI-83 graphing calcu ...

I have a 3 year old on the spectrum and your post was a pleasure to read. I hope my little guy fairs half as well as your husband and godson.

Want want want Lexie ...
Want want want Lexie ...
Want want want Lexie ...

/ surely not obscure here

Abe Vigoda's Ghost: [www.krtv.com image 588x431]

I'd sleep with her, but people would just think I was farking retarded.

They say she's a little retarded, but those titties ain't retarded!

megarian: The Stealth Hippopotamus: And that's why we lose international pageants

Ukrainian women > Polish women

/shameless flag-waving

+1 for the Ukraine

Crewmannumber6: Wineman said now she is used to living with autism now and has "very mild symptoms." She said she struggles to communicate at times. She also said she often takes things too literally.

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2013/01/10/miss-montana-alexis-wi neman-to-become-first-autistic-miss-america-contestant/#ixzz2Hhs78OZR

So in other words, she's a woman.

OK, now that one made me LOL.

Game, set and match, Australia

At least that makes sense, unlike when they put up a completely unqualified mentally disabled person just so they can pat themselves on the back for being such good people.

Look at us, we're AWESOME for helping out the mentally disabled with their fake dreams

Egalitarian: Incidentally I have a half-baked theory about autism and the coincidence of vaccination with autism becoming recognizable ... I think this is around the time when babies can start making demands as to what they want to eat. And these kids just want to eat cereal, the kind that doesn't have gluten. And the cereal makes it worse, and BAM suddenly the autism is really noticeable. Just my half-assed 2 cents there. Anecdotally, it seems like autistic kids have a thing for cereal.

(and no I don't think vaccine causes autism, it seems mostly genetic. the unfortunate side-effect of nerds breeding. but some foods definitely makes it worse!).

Wakefield's premise regarding vaccines is centered around the digestive tract. If I recall it correctly (I may be mixing in the work of others here), the MMR vaccine or the schedule of vaccines causes damage to the immune system. An over reaction, a switch flipped. This then manifests in the digestive tract, which is of course where foreign material enters and passes through the body. The recommendation on the original paper he was basically run out of the UK because of was not against vaccinations. It was to break up the MMR shot into three. That is spread out vaccines instead of overwhelming the immune system of a small child. That's it. A very simple and sensible recommendation to take it slow when screwing around with the immune system of a child.

It has been some time since I read it. But upon reading the actual paper it is quite sensible. What we see in the media and conversation is the social persecution of an idea that goes against the established way of doing things. What's behind it all is really a very simple suggestion that makes a good deal of sense. (To go slowly and spread out the vaccinations more)

She's pretty

/that's all

I would take her to the zoo, in a speeding bus, down a winding path, and would not stop until she was screamin'.

/Oh, and spermed

She's pretty... for a tard.