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Stop Isolating Autistic Adults and Calling It “Community-Based Housing”

Kit Mead  kpagination.wordpress.com Photo: Mike Wilson. Creative Commons license. [image: White paper houses with different colored doors & windows.] Introduction Less than a month after I wrote a blog post on the media misrepresentation of Autistic people like me, I’ve gotten wind of yet another case of journalism that misrepresents Autistic people – and in this case, community living too. The article is courtesy of Rolling Stone and the Atlantic reprinted it. I could link to it, but it’s one of the top results if you google “Rolling Stone autism.” Here are the two main premises of the article: High support autistic people can’t live fully in the community. But group homes cost too much. We should fund farm-based settings instead. The Medicaid settings rule in 2014 that declared most farms and compounds for disabled people segregated settings ruined many parents’ hopes and dreams. So… it’s unethical (because it is…

Colin Meloy in Defense of Not Reading the Huffington Post

Colin Meloy colinmeloy.tumblr.com A friend of mine wrote me asking why I’d suggested on Twitter that people stop reading the Huffington Post, saying that the political reporting is still really strong and important. This is what I wrote in response: Hey Sarah, Yeah, so maybe I got a little short in that tweet, but it’s hard to fit detailed reasoning into 140 characters — it was mostly just a frustration vent. I clearly hit emergency levels re: HuffPo, which seems to happen too often. Agreed: a lot of the political reporting is good. The editorial is awful, though. For whatever progress is made by the clear, insightful reporting done by the site’s fine political reporters is deeply undercut by the way it’s presented, with 5,678 point type headlines manufacturing outrage and sensation over every little thing that comes across their desk. Also: the constant feed of ugly, demeaning celebrity-worship-perpetuating trash…