A better reason for me to remember 9/11

If you have never heard my friend (well, acquaintance and perhaps future friend) Shaun Tirrell play, please take a few minutes and listen to him take on Liszt (I need to get Shaun to pull a Bugs Bunny; "Franz Liszt?  Never heard of him.").  Last night, Shaun made my year because he gave my daughter something she will never forget.

It was not out of disrespect for those killed ten years ago or for those who have given their lives and so much more in the war since then, but I actively tried to avoid anything related to the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.  I didn't want to watch any memorials.  My hope was to insulate myself through my DVR-space-eating Turner Classic Movies library or a book.  But my wife, Jen, talked me into taking her place accompanying our eight-year-old to the Savannah Philharmonic's annual 9/11 show, "The American Spirit."  Because Jen begged off, embellishing her "injuries" from a sterling performance in her first 5K run the previous day, September 11th is a date I will cherish.  A day many associate with terror is now the day an exquisite artist became an angel to my little girl.

Our daughter, Katie, has autism, Asperger syndrome to be exact.  It was not caused by anything, regardless of what charlatans like Jenny McCarthy tried to tell us for years in their effort to make themselves more stupidly wealthy.  It is just who Katie is.  Like many people with autism, Katie has had a gift for music since she could barely walk.  She attempted to sing before she could properly speak, and at the age of three, Katie stunned Jen and me when, after getting her first electronic keyboard, she almost immediately tried to play songs by ear.  When we bought Katie a children's book about how George Gershwin wrote his most famous piece, "Rhapsody In Blue", George became Katie's imaginary friend - his brother Ira arrived later because we needed another player for our soccer games.  When Jen saw that Shaun Tirrell would play the Rhapsody at "The American Spirit", she knew Katie had to be there.

Getting Katie to the show was no small task.  While she adores music, she also is terrified of the dark.  There is nothing worse, in her world, than a power outage, and Jen and I feared that she may not be able to handle the dimming of lights necessary in a theater.  But last year, Jen took her to a rehearsal of the Philharmonic's performance of "The Nutcracker" just before Christmas, and Katie handled it.  As many times as Katie has made us watch the God-awful Gershwin biopic, also called "Rhapsody in Blue", we knew she would be thrilled to hear the piece live.  Who better to deliver it than Mr. Tirrell.

Jen and I had twice before seen Shaun play with the Savannah Philharmonic, most recently at the previous 9/11 show.   That program featured another Gershwin tune, the final movement of his Concerto In F, most famously played by George's pal Oscar Levant in "An American In Paris" (in a dream sequence in which Oscar also conducted, played all the instruments in the orchestra, and was every member of the audience).  After the show, I told Jen that Shaun should have also been the emcee - in asking the audience to support the Philharmonic, he spoke with more passion and conviction than anyone in Savannah ever had, save for conductor/music director Peter Shannon.  In an "ask and ye shall receive" moment, Jen informed me that this year's "American Spirit" master of ceremonies would be Shaun Tirrell.

Still, she had to talk me into going, as it was a 9/11 concert, and  - and part of me feels horrible for thinking this - I was 9/11'end out a long time ago.  But Katie and I went, and during one of his emcee breaks, she perked up when Shaun began talking about "Rhapsody In Blue."  He told the story about how George found out he was writing a concerto for a concert of "American music" at New York's Aeolian Hall three weeks prior to the show - Ira read George the notice in a newspaper.  I expected Katie to pipe up, "Yeah, he was shooting pool with Buddy DeSylva when Ira told him," but she was too excited.  Shaun told of how George picked up rhythms for the Rhapsody from the sound of the train he rode from New York to Boston, where he was working on a new musical.  I kept waiting for Katie to say, "He also got inspiration from the Klezmer band at Ira's bar mitzvah and from the ragtime he heard outside the Barron Wilkins Club in Harlem when he was a kid" - I swear she would've said all that if I had been telling the story.  Instead, she was glued to her seat, smile touching her ears, whispering, "I know," to herself, or maybe to George.

After two other pieces, the Rhapsody began as it always begins, with the trill of a lone clarinet.  For the next 13 minutes, Katie was mostly hands, half-conducting, half fingering her own imaginary baby grand during Shaun's solo parts.  The performance, as is always the case when listening to American music's greatest composition, defied description.  The standing ovation was enormous, but no one was more animated than my daughter, jumping, screaming, clapping overhead as if she were at a Selena Gomez show (which proves I watch too much Disney Channel).  But, as they say (you know, 'they!'), the best was yet to come.

As the show ended and the crowd filed out of the ever-gorgeous Lucas Theater, I was about to text my wife when I noticed I had received a text from Mary Catherine, a family friend who works for the Philharmonic.  Holy crap, she was offering Katie a chance to meet Shaun!  We made our way backstage, and after introducing himself, Shaun offered to let Katie play for him in what served as his dressing room.  Katie, a mixture of nerves and thrills, sat down and played something I didn't recognize.  When Shaun asked if she wrote what she had played, she relaxed a bit and, as she has told us countless times, "no, I just made it up."

Dad was too stunned to move - I forgot to take even a single picture, though in retrospect I chalk it up to the words of one of the wisest men I know, children's book author Mo Willems.  During an appearance in Savannah a few months ago, Mo told us grown-ups to turn off our cameras during his reading to our kids because, "we often get so busy chronicling life that we forget to take the time to experience life."

As we exited, stage right, we saw Peter Shannon briefly as much of Savannah attempted to be photographed with His Maestroness.  Peter and I have been friends for a few years, though we didn't get a chance to continue our ribbing of each other - me making fun of his lack of follicle fortitude on his head, and he reminding me that he is wildly successful and I am not.  But Katie did get to tell him how much she enjoyed the show, particularly Shaun's playing and her chance to meet him.  So, if I didn't say it loudly enough last night, thank you Peter for bringing Shaun to Savannah time and again.  Thank you Jen for making me go to the concert, and thank you Mary Catherine for setting up a thrill for our little girl.

Most of all, thank you Shaun Tirrell for being a nice guy, an ambassador for good music and for giving Katie something that will inspire her for a long time.  More people outside the world of classical music should have heard of you by now, and it won't be my fault if the rest of the world doesn't know about the person and the musician you are.

As we left the stage to head toward the exit, Katie exclaimed, "This was the best time ever!"  That goes for both of us, kid.

Me, myself, and McCarthyism

"Dr." Andrew Wakefield, the "scientist" who was discredited last week by Britain's General Medical Council more than a decade after that same council legitimized him, has finally spoken about the rejection of his studies that supposedly link autism with the measles, mumps, and rubella (MMR) vaccine. Well, that is if the doc has bleached his hair blond and grown breasts. Here is part of the statement issued in defense of Mr. Wakefield (sorry, I will not call him Dr.) from those world-renowned experts on medical science, Jim McCarthy and Jenny Carrey:

Despite rampant misreporting, Dr. Wakefield's original paper regarding 12 children with severe bowel disease and autism never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not vaccines cause autism, and The Lancet's retraction gets us no closer to understanding this complex issue.

In related news, Bill Clinton admitting to an affair with Monica Lewinsky never rendered any judgment whatsoever on whether or not that affair actually took place. Oh, and this little tidbit that was on the website of JennyJim's pet group Generation Rescue:

Generation Rescue believes that childhood neurological disorders such as autism, Asperger’s, ADHD/ADD, speech delay, sensory integration disorder, and many other developmental delays are all misdiagnoses for mercury poisoning.

Well, never mind. That statement isn't on the website any more. Generation Rescue now merely claims that autism was caused by exposure to Sarah Palin speeches. More from Dr. Jenny:

The retraction from The Lancet was a response to a ruling from England's General Medical Council, a kangaroo court where public health officials in the pocket of vaccine makers served as judge and jury. Dr. Wakefield strenuously denies all the findings of the GMC and plans a vigorous appeal.

Vaccine makers have only one pocket between them? I just read a couple of great books on sartorial king Fred Astaire, and I know those English tailors make better suits than that. Maybe Jenny, or Jim or whichever press hack actually wrote the statement, meant to say pouch since they brought kangaroos into the discussion.

For the past decade, parents in our community have been clamoring for a relatively simple scientific study that could settle the debate over the possible role of vaccines in the autism epidemic once and for all: compare children who have been vaccinated with children who have never received any vaccines and see if the rate of autism is different or the same.

You know, she (he? it?) is absolutely right. We need one study to say once and for all whether there is a link. The Institute of Medicine has done only eight studies on the subject already, and the fact that those eight studies found no link between vaccines and autism shows just how desperately we need that one last study that isn't in anyone's pocket or pockets. Except the pocket that holds Mr. Wakefield's $270,000 annual salary from a non-profit; that pocket is a-okay. As for those dozens of other studies that haven't found any connection between autism and vaccines? Why, those should also be the impetus to let Mr. Wakefield do the scientific work that gets us the result that we want!! And while we wait for that study to come out, why don't you head over to our "non-profit" website and stock up on some $99 books and some gluten-free goodies that will wash that autism right out of your child's hair.

Jenny (kind of makes you have a Forest Gump moment when you say that, doesn't it?) goes on to argue that the only reason the medical council chose now to distance itself from Mr. Wakefield is that he and some other "scientists" are about to publish that one, definitive, "my research is bigger than yours" study involving monkeys. Never mind that the journal publishing the study, Neurotoxicology, is being criticized by many reputable scientists for publishing the work of someone who fraudulently obtained material for his previous "study." Oh, sorry. The journal is just about to publish the new study, as Jenny explains:

Dr. Wakefield and his scientific colleagues are on the brink of publishing their entire study, which followed the monkeys through the U.S. childhood vaccine schedule over a multi-year period. It is our understanding that the difference in outcome for the vaccinated monkeys versus the unvaccinated controls is both stark and devastating.

Jenny would have better luck gaining credibility if she tried to re-publish Peter Gabriel's hit "Shock The Monkey." I don't have to tell you that the first portion of Wakefield's monkey study published last October has already been discredited by a lot of people a lot smarter than me. But you have to give the guy credit. In his latest study, he used a grand total of 14 monkeys. That's two more monkeys than the number of kids Wakefield used in his original 1998 study designed to scare parents into paying him a boatload of money. I know that I would trust a study of 14 monkeys a whole lot more than I trust a study of 537,000 children published eight years ago that showed no link between vaccines and autism. That study, of course, found that the entire country of Denmark, at least the men and women doing that thing you do to bear children, were paid off by vaccine companies.

Speaking of being paid off, I am so glad that ripping Mrs. Fire Marshal Bill has bought me that yacht and that beachfront mansion on Tybee I have always wanted:

Led by the pharmaceutical companies and their well-compensated spokespeople, Dr. Wakefield is being vilified through a well-orchestrated smear campaign designed to prevent this important new work from seeing the light of day.

Being Californians, Jenny and Jim should by now have seen the work of ace consumer TV reporter Rick Romero, who has the greatest living mustache and is the poster boy for obvious statements (if you are a fan of Fark.com, I needn't say more). I hope Rick sends the McCarthys one of those fancy, new electronic mail messages detailing his special report next week, "The Internet. How this new technology can help you spread the word about anything."

Thanks to the web, you can get a legion of folks to believe just about anything. Do you believe the president is a secret Muslim alien throat-wobbler mango? Do you think Glenn Beck is using poisonous gold underwear to get everyone to kiss his bootay? If you believe such blather, you can find those of like mind on the internet. You can say just about anything on the web and get away with it, so the only people with the power to silence Mr. Wakefield are whoever writes the paychecks from Jim and Jenny's account.

So despite losing another match to the truth, the crowd parroting the latest version of McCarthyism says it will continue to push for a "cure" for autism. I will leave that to someone else who is bit more qualified to speak on the subject than Jenny or I am, Dr. Temple Grandin. The autistic Dr. Grandin is a famous lecturer and professor of animal studies at Colorado State University whose life was just made into an HBO movie starring Claire Danes. When asked by MSNBC if there needed to be a "cure" for autism, Dr. Grandin replied;

I believe there’s a point where mild autistic traits are just normal human variation. Mild autism can give you a genius like Einstein. If you have severe autism, you could remain nonverbal. You don’t want people to be on the severe end of the spectrum. But if you got rid of all the autism genetics, you wouldn’t have science or art. All you would have is a bunch of social ‘yak yaks.’

Someone desperately needs to sell Dr. Grandin some of Jenny's "Nana's No-Gluten Cookies", as she is obviously out of control. How dare she refer to Jenny and Jim as yaks. They aren't nearly that hairy, at least as far as we know. They are simply intolerant of those who disagree with them, even when those who disagree have all the evidence on their side. They are McCarthyites in the truest sense of the word.

NOTE: This column makes several references to Jim McCarthy and Jenny Carrey (yes, I transposed their names on purpose) that might be confusing. Just so as to avoid this confusion;

Jim Carrey, formerly a very funny man and vastly underrated actor, is now the companion of Jenny McCarthy.

Jenny McCarthy, formerly nekkid in magazines, now believes she can cure autism and you can't because she has all of Jim Carrey's money at her disposal.

No link between vaccines and autism....again

When your opinion of a subject is vindicated, the human temptation is to pull a pro wrestling's Degeneration X, making a lewd gesture toward a certain part of your anatomy while telling the person with the opposing viewpoint to "Su--- --!" Okay, maybe that's just my temptation. It hit me when I read the news that the British medical journal The Lancet had retracted it's 1998 study saying there may have been a link between childhood vaccines and autism. But as a parent of an autistic child, I truly have no ill feelings toward other autism-spectrum parents. I feel sorry that they were duped by a "doctor" whose study methods apparently were later adopted by the British climate scientists.

I take that back. I don't feel entirely sorry for Jenny McCarthy. My thoughts on her are already documented, and while I do empathize with her as a parent, her sanctimoniousness toward the rest of the world ever since she decided to put on her clothes and try to speak in complete sentences has been nauseating. Nevertheless, I suspect that some "news" show will put her on television again to rebut science, since Jenny has for whatever reason become the poster mom of autism parents. Does this mean I have to get nekkid for a magazine to be taken seriously?

Well, I suppose it's either take off the clothes or take the route to seriousness used by "Dr." Andrew Wakefield. All he had to do to be taken seriously for the last dozen years or so was essentially fake a medical study and get a dozen of his fellow doctors to jump on his gravy train. Despite The Lancet now admitting that he is largely full of hooey, many people will still take Wakefield seriously, and he will probably continue to make a killing at his private clinic in Texas. Why any parent, regardless of their child's affliction, would take their kid to a doctor who would, at his own son's birthday party no less, pay kids eight bucks each to let him draw their blood for his "study" is beyond me.

I understand the frustration of parents who are desperate for a "cure" to autism. I am also sure the parents of someone born blind would love for them to be able to see. But my autistic daughter is doing great things, just as many great things have come from two good friends who haven't seen a thing in their entire lives. Gordon and Michael Mote were both born blind. All Gordon has done is become a phenomenal pianist who is one of Nashville's most sought-after musicians. Mike, an old radio partner of mine, runs a radio board better than anyone with sight I have ever known. They don't need a cure for their afflictions. Neither does my first-grader.

Already, something called the National Autism Association is criticizing The Lancet. "Certainly the retraction of this paper doesn't mean that MMR (the measles, mumps, and rubella vaccine) doesn't cause autism and it's all a farce," said Wendy Fournier, the association's president. She adds that it is "possible" that the MMR vaccine causes autism, but "the science is not there in terms of the mechanism." Dangling by one finger to the clock's big hand as your 15 minutes of fame expires must be a tough thing. In other words, vaccines don't cause autism, but we still believe they do. I sure hope those parents love their autistic children as much as they love whoring themselves to the media.

I believe in free speech, except for Jenny McCarthy

Did you know that there is evidence that Savannah State football players suffer from a defect that, in a controversial theory being postulated by some, is caused by the Savannah State campus's approximate distance from Wiley's Championship BBQ and other fine Savannah restaurants. Take this factor, multiply it by pi (that's 3.1416 etc., not lemon meringue), and you find the defect that will prevent the Tigers from fielding a winning team, at least until you put them on a special milk-free diet. Ludicrous? Sure, but no more ludicrous than the bizarre notions being spewed forth by "actress" Jenny McCarthy and others in the name of "curing" autism in children.

Autism, if you don't know, is a wide spectrum of issues that affect the way one out of every 110 people communicate and/or interact with others. Many people with disorders on the autism spectrum make poor eye-contact or perform actions such as rocking back and forth, waving their arms, or repeating with alarming detail the way you cursed out another driver during a road-rage fit, including the date and time of the incident and the proper conjugation of the curse words. Before you gasp at the flippantness of that last sentence, I should let you know that our daughter is autistic, so I speak from experience. I also wouldn't "cure" her for all the money in the world.

The latest in what has been an endless line of evidence that there is no known cause for autism, nor a medical "cure", comes from a panel of experts publishing in the journal Pediatrics. The report says there is no evidence that digestive problems are more prevalent in children with autism than in others, and that special diets being hocked by McCarthy and other charlatans don't do a thing to change autistic behavior. It's the latest blow to what we will call Wakefieldism, named after British doctor Andrew Wakefield, who finagled a study in 1998 that he claimed linked autism and a bowel disorder to the measles vaccine.

No serious researcher has ever confirmed Wakefield's findings, but that hasn't stopped him from making a ton of money at his clinic in Texas. It also hasn't stopped McCarthy from lecturing us that autism would go away if we simply expose our kids to the risk of measles, whooping cough and polio and have them eat char-grilled bean sprout burgers on gluten-free buns three times a day. I have a hard enough time getting our kid to eat normal, child-friendly food, not because she can't poop properly but because she inherited her father's childhood finickiness. But even if I could eliminate the fun from her diet, I wouldn't because it wouldn't change her autistic behavior one bit.

Ms. McCarthy and many other parents of autistic children would argue with me until they were blue in the face, but...and let me type this slowly so it sinks in....there is no evidence on their side. None, nada, zip, zero, not an iota of medical evidence backs them up. You can't say it hasn't been studied, because autism has been looked at incessantly for over eleven years ever since Mr. Wakefield apparently decided he needed a get-rich-quick scheme. I know, I know. The lack of medical evidence is part of the conspiracy and coverup by the vaccine companies, the government, Donald Trump's hair, and the aliens locked in the secret room at the top of the gold dome at Savannah City Hall. Silly me.

Yes, being a parent of an autistic child is difficult. So is being the parent of a blind child or a deaf child or a child with down syndrome. Our autistic daughter also brings us joy for her laughter, her musical gifts, her ability to read and do math well above her first-grade level, and the love she showers upon her little sister. Sure, her behavior is sometimes hard to control, but you know what, so is mine, particularly when Jenny McCarthy tells me how much I stink as a parent. I believe in the first amendment as much as anyone, but if there ever is censorship of ex-blond bimbos, I might look the other way.