Maybe Michael Savage has “compassion deficit disorder”

Last week, New York Times reporter Judith Warner published a blog post called Compassion Deficit Disorder.

In the post, Warner compares Michael Savage’s accusation that autism is a fraud to comments by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager that Barack Obama had “played the race card.” From there, Warner talks of how her niece’s schoolmates at a Midwestern suburban high school “bewailed the terrible unfairness of a college application system that, they believed, gave unfair advantage to racial minorities and students from economically disadvantaged homes.”

This seemed like a bit of a stretch to me at first. What did Michael Savage, John McCain’s campaign manager and these suburban high school kids have in common? I kept reading, though, and got her answer.

I won’t dwell too long on this. I’ll just say that Savage is hardly alone in his views.

From where — other than ignorance — does all this ugliness spring? From a cultural moment when people feel locked in hand-to-hand combat, competing for an ever-shrinking stock of resources.

As is usually the case, this piece makes more sense when you read the entire post. If you didn’t get a chance to read it when it was published on August 7th, I encourage you to read it now.


 

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