Ann Coulter

        Ann Coulter, a conservative commentator on several television networks, made a rude remark about President Obama during his third debate with Mitt Romney. She tweeted, "I highly approve of Romney's decision to be kind and gentle to the retard."

         An athlete in this year's Special Olympics, a man with Down's Syndrome, John Franklin Stevens, wrote an incredibly moving and articulate blog post, asking Coulter to reconsider the use of the word, "retard,"and to moderate her speech  - inviting her to attend the Special Olympics and to learn more about the disabled. Coulter then doubled down with her invective on Alan Colmes' Fox News Radio show on Thursday, lashing out at Mr. Stevens and others who were offended by her tweet.  Coulter dismissed her critics as the "word police."

        “Oh, screw them,” she said. “That’s what they feel I do? I feel they’re being authoritarian bullying victims.”

         I had a hard time understanding her. She takes such glee in causing emotional injury; she's like a teenaged "mean girl" - except she's fifty years old! At first, I thought that she had no empathy, an accusation that is commonly leveled at people on the autism spectrum. Her behavior is very different, however, so used Wikipedia to look up sociopathy.

        Wikipedia cites the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems, 10th edition, from the World Health Organization, defines a related disorder, "dissocial personality disorder." It is "characterized by at least three of the following symptoms:
             1. Callous unconcern for the feelings of others.
             2. Gross and persistent attitude of irresponsibility and disregard for  social norms, rules, and obligations.
             3. Incapacity to maintain enduring relationships, though having no difficulty in establishing them.
             4. Very low tolerance to frustration and a low threshold for discharge of agression, including violence.
             5. Incapacity to experience guilt or to profit from experience, particularly punishment.
             6. Markedly prone to blame others or to offer plausible rationalizations for the behavior that has brought the person into conflict with society.

There may be persistent irritability as an associated feature."

          There you have it. Ann Coulter certainly has a callous disregard for the feelings of others, indeed, she has repeatedly taken pleasure in crushing the feelings of her political enemies and anyone who defends them or their ideas. In so doing, she has exhibited a persistent and gross disregard for appropriate behavior in a civilized society. She has never married and has no children although she has, by all accounts, been involved in a number of short-term relationships. She is incapable of feeling guilt about her words and actions and she routinely blames others in order to rationalize her behavior, showing a low tolerance for frustration, lashing out as she did in this case when she is corrected, however gently. I've never seen her offer physical violence but she is an emotional atomic bomb. And she certainly seems irritable, every time I've seen her on television (admittedly, not often, as I tend to change the channel to avoid hate-mongers).

        I'm NOT a psychiatrist. However, I don't need to be a biologist to recognize a female dog when I see one. It is my opinion, as a human being, that Ann Coulter is missing a large part (if not all) of her soul. I would pity her if she wasn't so poisonous and so influential. She may well be a sociopath. She certainly acts like one.

Then, my arms melted….

At a neighbor’s tag sale last week, I was reminded of an event from my work for Ace Frehley, which was reinforced by an internet meme today, so here’s my story.

Ace wanted to have the effects modified in the lit guitar. He only ever used a single pattern and sometimes, the controls got bumped while he was playing. He wanted them disabled. John and I drove down to Providence, Rhode Island, where KISS was playing that night. Once we got there, it was apparent that the smoker also needed some work. We hadn’t brought the special wire that it needed – the insulation on ordinary wires wasn’t sturdy enough for the temperatures inside the smoker so Teflon-coated wire was needed - but even it was damaged over time. The closest source for Teflon wire was back in Wilbraham, at Industrial Components Corporation, just down the road from us but a five hour round trip from Providence, and there wasn’t enough time to go back before the show! John called our neighbor’s son, Ronny, who was only too eager to pick up the wire and drive to Providence immediately if it meant that he could meet Ace and see the show from backstage.

Ronny arrived about two hours before show time – plenty of time for John to replace the wiring in the smoker. I couldn’t do anything with the lit guitar before the show as it had to be recharged and there wasn’t enough time to do it twice; Ace always wanted a full charge on the battery or the lights would die before the end of the song. I was hungry; I’d been hanging out at the venue since 10 AM and hadn’t eaten any breakfast before we left the house. It was dinner time and I wanted food! John had promised that we would get a good dinner (I wanted seafood) but there just wasn’t time to go and return before the show. I considered running out for a grinder but John pointed out the crew buffet in a nearby dressing room.

I found a paper plate and napkins, extracted a breast from one of the rotisserie chickens with my jackknife, selected a roll and buttered it to make a sandwich with the meat, and considered the available drinks. The pickings were thin; there were a few cans of Coke but I only drank Diet Coke. A full pitcher of orange juice was covered by plastic wrap and large plastic glasses were laid out nearby. I filled a glass, grabbed a handful of M&Ms from the bowl, and sat down to consume my dinner. 

Ace strolled in, asked me if the juice was freshly squeezed – it was. He poured himself a glass, too, grabbed some chicken, then left to get ready for the concert. I refilled my glass and dumped a handful of M&Ms into a napkin and returned to help John. He wasn’t hungry and asked where the juice came from. John had a piece of chicken breast, too, and informed me that he never consumed anything that wasn’t sealed – drinks in cans or processed snacks – at concerts. It was too late now, so I ignored his concern for the moment. I was wrong.

About 45 minutes later, I felt dizzy. Things didn’t look right. I’ve always seen lines coming from bright lights but the lines started to have more colored highlights. I also saw stop-motion effects, something I’ve never seen except when running a high fever. I knew that I’d been drugged. I went out to watch the concert. The bright lights were fun to watch but Ace, uncharacteristically, wasn’t playing well; he seemed to be tripping, too. I lay down across some chairs backstage for a while but eventually, the lit guitar had been used and Ace had switched to another guitar. I could go to work.

My arms were melting. I kept having to pick my hands up, off of the floor, and it was hard to hold tools and John told me to just pack everything up. I took the lit guitar home to fix it, but I only had a few days before the next gig, so I didn’t have enough time to make it a pretty fix.

Getting into the car, I was afraid that my arms would stretch so far I wouldn’t be able to keep my hands inside. I was sure my hands would be left on the ground, outside the car, and my stretchy arms would get run over by the tires - my hands would be amputated. How would I ever fix the guitar with no hands? John assured me that he wouldn’t let that happen and he got in and drove up home. I tried to sleep on the ride but all of the lights kept distracting me. I watched them with closed eyes. Eventually, we got home and went to bed. My arms were better the next day and I was able to start the guitar job.

I don’t remember exactly what was wrong with it but I think the microprocessor was acting up or not working correctly. After further consultation with John, I removed the entire microprocessor board and supporting devices, and replaced it with an octal counter and a few other components. An octal counter is a device that counts to eight, over and over again. Since the lit guitar had eight sections of bulbs (seven bars plus the border), and Ace only used the pattern that just marched the lit segments in order, lighting one chunk at a time from the neck to the base, then flashed the border, the octal counter was much simpler circuitry than the original microprocessor – a single (small) chip and a couple of components versus a circuit board full of large chips, half a dozen switches, and wires like a plateful of spaghetti. I didn't discard the board and still have the original circuitry in my collection of electronics.

There were a number of switches built into the side of the guitar, fastened by an aluminum bezel that I had made, years before; I removed all of them and covered the holes in the bezel with a single strip of black electrical tape. There wasn’t enough time for me to make up a new aluminum bezel before Ace needed the guitar back for the next gig.

So, when I ran into Ronny at his mother’s tag sale last week, he reminded me of the part he played in getting the smoker fixed. That and meeting Ace were highlights of his youth and no one ever believed him that they had occurred. He introduced me to his girlfriend and I reassured her that Ronny was not making it up. I’m not sure she believed me, either, but at least Ronny felt better that day. Then, an internet meme about acid today reminded me again of how my arms melted when I needed to work, which prompted this blog entry.

I don't understand

What does it mean when someone tells you that they are a “fashion photographer?” I met a very pleasant young man tonight and that’s what he told me. He had a friend and a model with him, helping him out in redecorating his new studio space. The model was a waif-like young woman with huge eyes and a limp handshake. They were nice enough but I could tell that they were utterly bewildered by me and what I do. The feeling was mutual.

The photographer showed me some photos on his iPad that he that he had taken; they consisted of dramatic poses by various models, often focusing on their facial features, particularly their overly made-up eyes. The contrast between light and shadow was particularly effective in creating drama but I thought that fashion photography was supposed to highlight clothing, not the model. I’ve seen similar poses in various magazines and I often don’t know what I’m supposed to be looking at - unless the picture is part of an ad. Then, the advertiser or accompanying text can give a clue if the product isn’t obvious.

But what am I supposed to make of the series of pretty young women with overly dramatic eyes, all wearing size zero clothing? A few were in filmy dresses, translucent skirts attractively billowing in a fan-induced breeze. Most were dressed in yoga pants and blouses – nothing interesting, the clothes just used to highlight their stereotypically model/whip-thin bodies. Nonetheless, I complimented him on the pictures; they were attractive. I just didn’t see what distinguished them in terms of fashion.

What IS a fashion photographer? I understand the photographer part, but what differentiates this “fashion” photographer from a portrait photographer? I don’t get it.

An unpleasant encounter

I wear many hats. In a couple of them, I teach various subjects in several local institutions. Recently, I was finishing up my semester work, which means copying my tests and other in-class exercises for the permanent file of that semester. I also have several forms to include, plus a copy of my gradebook. I prefer to keep my gradebook on my laptop; that way, I know I’m not going to leave it on the roof of my car as I go zipping off to the next institution! 

I needed to print out my gradebook, so, thumbdrive in hand, I went to a computer room at this institution. Both students and faculty use the computers  in the room and there is a single networked printer. I entered; it was late afternoon and there was a single student in the room, doing some research. She was studying for an associate’s degree in medical assisting; I knew this from her scrubs. She didn’t look pleased as I entered and sat down at a computer down the row from her; she may even have glowered at me. I pulled up my file and made some last minute formatting changes to it, then attempted to print the file. I say attempted, because only a single page came out of the printer, not the two that I expected after my formatting changes. 

I went back to my computer and attempted to print the second page, alone. The printer made an unpleasant crunching sound and nothing emerged. I tend to talk to myself and this was no exception, saying, “Oh, no! It’s jammed!” I guess the woman thought that I was talking to her, as she responded. 

Her voice had an edge of attitude as she said, somewhat aggressively, “It was working just fine a minute ago.” 

I went to the printer; its trouble lights were blinking. I opened its compartments, attempting to see where the jam was located. A crumpled piece of paper stuck out slightly from the rollers inside the paper drawer, on the underside of the printer. I started to ease it out but, towards the end of the sheet, I heard a tearing sound.  When I got the piece of paper out, it was missing a small chunk in the middle of the sheet. I knew that the printer would continue to jam until the piece was removed but I didn’t have the time to do it. I also knew that the printer queue had my confidential gradebook in it! I shut off the printer to disrupt the queue and went back to the computer, to cancel the print job. I told the woman that there was still a small piece of paper inside the printer. She told me again, officiously, that the printer had been working just fine. 

I went to the office to report the problem. The office manager was not at her desk but I ran into my superior, whom I informed about the problem. I also gave her the sheet with the bite out of it, so she would know how much paper was left behind.

I went upstairs, to the prep room, to do my printing. The printer located there had several lights already blinking, before I did anything. I looked up the manual for the printer on the internet and used it to interpret the lights. It was completely out of toner and it refused to print. I trapsed back downstairs (I actually used the elevator). On the first floor, the office manager was back, so I told her about the toner. She said that she had tried out the first printer and it was now working, so back I went to the original room. The woman was still there; she immediately informed me in a pugnacious tone that I should not have left with the printer turned off and that it worked ,”just fine.” 

Back to my original computer station, I plugged in my trusty thunbdrive and pulled up the page, then, once again, attempted to print it. The printer made a loud crunching sound and, once again, all of the trouble lights started blinking. I scampered back to the office and quickly reported the problem. Back in the lab, I again opened the printer’s compartments. The crumpled paper was in the same place. I managed to extract this one fully intact, shut off the printer to purge its queue, and turned it back on. As I worked, the woman talked continuously, telling me that I should keep my hands off of it; that I should tell the front office that it was not working. I initially told her that I had reported it already but, as she continued to tell me what to do, I finally told her that I was a faculty member. She said that this didn’t matter, that I shouldn’t have left the printer shut off after the first failure and that it “worked fine” before me. That might have been true, but it was certainly jammed, now, and nothing that I was doing was going to jam it further!

After I removed the paper, I went back to my workstation to close my file and purge the print job. She continued to harangue me; I finally told her that I was an engineer and probably knew more about printers than the office manager – not polite but probably true. She got incensed at this comment. Her tone, which had not been polite from the start, was now extremely confrontational and rude. She said that if I was an engineer, I should have been able to fix the printer, and that if I was an engineer, why was I working there?

I again told her that I was a faculty member and asked her for her name. She refused to give it and grew angrier. I told her that part of her program was to learn how to behave in an office situation and that her behavior was very rude and inappropriate. She got even angrier and I started to have some concern that she might become physical, not for my own safety (I’ve had some training in martial arts) but on general principles – it was utterly absurd that a would-be medical professional would take such an offensive position with anyone! From the beginning, she seemed to want to put me in a subordinate position to her and what seemed to make her angriest was that I was not kowtowing to her. I finished closing the program, got permission from the computer to remove my thumbdrive, took it out, packed my belongings, and left the room.   

I went back to the office and found my superior and gave her a brief synopsis of the events. I didn’t tell her about my final concerns as nothing physical had happened. She went in to talk to the student. I went to another computer lab (across the hall) and was able to hear most of the student’s description of what happened as I was finally able to print out the gradebook. What surprised me most was that she only mildly toned down her attitude. Still, it was a very different interaction; my superior was also a middle-aged black woman and is well-known to all of the students so this woman had a somewhat milder tone with her than with me. According the student, everything wrong with the printer was my own fault for my not trying to get any help from the office. She either did not notice my repeated trips to the office or didn’t want to remember them.

As I left the building, my superior and the person in charge of the room (she, also, had been out of the room for my unpleasant encounter) were both wrestling with the printer, trying to find the scrap in the print path. I left them to it; the student was still there and I didn’t want to inflame anything.  My main concern was that I had forgotten to purge the print job, so I told my superior about it and she assured me that she would take care of it.

I can’t say for certain, but I suspect this unpleasant interaction was racially based. I think the student didn’t like me at first glance simply because I’m white. She started out very unfriendly and got worse as time went on. My interpretation is that her own insecurities about race made her want to put me in my place at the outset and I wasn’t cooperating or even responding in what she considered a predictable manner, so she got more and more angry.

The funny thing is, for me, it’s over, so I will be even less predictable at any future encounter. I won’t know her when I see her because of my face-blindness! I’ll be cheerful and polite to her (again) because I won’t be able to differentiate between her and any other middle-aged black woman; I may be able to recognize her from her voice but I might not. I’m sure she’ll be unnerved. But it isn’t my problem!

I’m afraid that, after graduation, this student is going to get a job in a doctor’s office where she will have to deal with white people as patients, co-workers, and/or superiors. If she really does have racial issues, she’s going to cop another attitude at an inappropriate time and get fired for it. Or maybe she was just having a rough day, today, and took it out on the stranger (me). But I’m not sure which is worse – if she a racist or just nasty to random strangers.  In either case, I don’t want her to ever have anything to do with my medical care. 

  

I’ve certainly had times when I felt that the way that I was being treated was based on my appearance (try going into an upscale women’s clothing store dressed in cheap jeans and a T-shirt!), even had times when I thought that my treatment was racially based (watch the difference in bargaining in a Mexican market with gringo customers versus local customers for the same objects), but this is the first time I’ve had someone, apparently, take offense at my existence solely on the basis of my skin color. It’s very disturbing, in this day and age.

Reflections on diagnosis

I’ve continued to think about why my diagnosis of Asperger’s was a matter of “confrontation” or “something I could no longer deny.”  My current words still betray the negative connotation that I felt at the time.

A devout Fundamentalist would deny and repress their homosexuality and resort to intense soul searching, begging God to remove this integral part of their personality, as long as they remained a member of a church that considered homosexuality to be a sin and a matter of choice. This is how I felt about being on the spectrum. “Normal” was something to which I aspired, something that I thought, if I only tried hard enough, would bring me ultimate happiness. Such a devout Fundamentalist would be described as being deeply in the closet. It is no accident that the words I used when I first spoke of my Asperger’s in public included my “coming out.”

To continue with my analogy, like my hypothetical devout Fundamentalist, in order to find peace with myself, I’ve had to change metaphorical churches, to realign myself to a vision that accepts my differences. My self image now reflects the realization that I could never be the woman (that it feels to me) that the majority of the world wanted me to be. In the past, I’d often said, pugnaciously, that I was different and the heck with anyone who couldn’t deal with it – but I wasn’t being honest with myself as I said it. I was the one with the biggest problem about who I was!  

For me, self-diagnosis was a confrontation – when I was forced, against my will, to confront the totality of my differences and see them for all that they added up to. And it was devastating. But after the war, I could (metaphorically) pick myself up, start to rebuild my self-image (now including self-acceptance of AS), and continue with my life.  But I wasn’t the only one with a faulty image of me.

A few days after the tests, I told my supervisor, a man who should know better, about my results. He immediately minimized their interpretation and denied the possibility that I might be on the spectrum. He had an image of me that did not include the possibility that I could have hidden such deficits from him in all of our interviews, discussions, and other encounters, at the school where we worked.

On one hand, this interaction made me feel better about my acting skills, but it upset me that he seemed to want to push me back into the closet. We never had a chance to discuss this again because shortly afterwards, I got critically ill and never went back to school. Still – after all of my research about AS, one thing about this has troubled me. “Theory of mind” is, in part, the realization that others may not share your knowledge. People on the spectrum are supposed to lack "theory of mind." This man had a tremendous skill, one of which he was very proud to have developed. He could recognize. and call by name, every person that came into his school. He intimated that every teacher could (and should) develop this skill, with sufficient effort, and that such effort separated good teachers from bad. In all of our interactions, he never seemed to notice that, although I hugged and chatted with kids and teachers all of the time (in hallways and in classrooms), I usually did not call anyone by name unless I had a list (or photographs) at hand. He saw that I “recognized” people, so it must be equivalent to the way that he recognized everyone. In the morning, how could I be greeting everyone with a welcoming smile but recognizing only a few, but still hugging those who responded to me with their own smiles and listening carefully to the cacophony of voices for clues about identity? Who seems to have had a faulty “theory of mind,” here?

As I’ve talked to more and more people on and off of the spectrum, I’ve found myself seeing more and more adults who’ve never gotten a diagnosis and who are often at odds with their surroundings – and there are a LOT of them out there! I’ve been teaching at a small college, with classes of 8-15 students. Out of five classes, so far, I’ve had two students that see to be to obviously be on the spectrum but I was not allowed to tell them (there are strict rules about what I’m allowed to tell students at school outside of my curriculum and I am also not allowed to form outside relationships with them).

I’m NOT a psychologist but these people are so stereotypical (from my research about my own differences) that they should qualify for a diagnosis. People like me aren’t so clear-cut – we are better actors and are able to hide it from strangers and mere acquaintances, although not from those who know us best, who can see it as clearly as I see it in these students. Or is it just that you need to be one to see one, sometimes?

I wonder how these adults see themselves? Are they, also, struggling with a self-image that never quite lines up with what they are? I’ve got to think about the restrictions on my speech in this job, but would it be appropriate for me to say anything, if there were no restrictions? How would I have reacted if a teacher had made this suggestion to me? Just because I’m out of the metaphorical closet doesn’t mean I have the right to out anyone else, even just to themselves, if they are content with the state of denial.