moriath

Got an e-mail today. Because of a fuck up on their end, they want to charge me another $1200 for the wedding in service fees. I am trying to figure out how to diplomatically tell them to fuck off, because I fail to see how I should be held responsible for this at this point. They have had almost a year to catch this mistake, and on top of all of the other mistakes this hotel has made I'm not feeling generous. And I don't know ANY bride that is feeling generous with her money EIGHT DAYS BEFORE THE WEDDING.

I am currently collecting my thoughts for a rather sternly worded letter to the wedding coordinator, which will be CC'd to the assistant manager of the hotel (who I've already complained to a few times about the lack of organization over there). Anyone have any suggestions?

Radio host angers parents of autistic children

And the executive vice president of Autism Speaks says we should just "ignore it."

With all due respect sir, this is not something we can ignore.

Summary of Michael Savage's assholery (this time around): children who are diagnosed as autistic are "brats" who haven't "been told to cut the act out."

I do think there's a time and a place for ignoring when idiots put their feet in their mouths, but I draw the line when an influential personality is spreading false and dangerous information. To me, this is no different than Tom Cruise telling women with post-partum depression that they should be exercising and taking vitamins rather than seeking psychiatric help for their problem.

See, as little as 20 years ago, there was still a persistent belief that autism was caused by the refrigerator mother. I know because people in my mother's own church accused her of being such when my brother was diagnosed.

Let me repeat that: people in her church accused her of being "emotionally frigid" and causing her son's impairment. Never mind that it was obvious by then that I was well on my way to being an above-average child (how would I have accomplished that without "maternal warmth"?).

The families of autistic people have every right to be livid that this guy is spewing hurtful misinformation to a national audience, just as families of depressed people were livid at Tom Cruise. We can not ignore speech that has a very real negative impact on families who are already fighting an uphill battle against misinformation. Ignoring it gets us nowhere.

Will Michael Savage be fired? Probably not. Look at what happened with Don Imus. Should he be held accountable for his actions? Hell yeah. I wish he would be fired (though I admit I'm terribly biased in this situation, so take that recommendation with a grain of salt), but that wouldn't solve the underlying problem, would it?

The best way to combat speech we don't like is with more speech.

"Ignoring it" doesn't put any more speech out there.