Autism Speaks and the Underpants Curse

Guest post by Rita Skeeter, award-winning journalist and ultra-reliable source for all the dirt you've ever wanted to read.


That was the name we gave it when I was a schoolgirl at Hogwarts, although the dry dusty textbook simply described it as a spell to reveal the embarrassing truth about someone. I shan't go into the details of the spell on a Muggle blog, but I'll say that it was quite popular with the students because its hapless target might suddenly find himself standing in front of the classroom in nothing but his brightly colored cartoon-print underpants.

When wielded by a more adept and sophisticated user of magic, such as yours truly, the spell has many subtler uses. I've often found it helpful for such purposes as inducing a corrupt Ministry official to make a misstep, thus giving me fodder for another of my highly acclaimed investigative reports while also providing a valuable public service.

I recently put the Underpants Curse on two ridiculously arrogant Muggles who were overdue for some public exposure of the less flattering sort. The first was Suzanne Wright of Autism Speaks, whose atrocious attitude I've mentioned before. She had been putting on a halfway convincing pretense of caring about autistic people, by means of high-profile lobbying for mandatory insurance coverage; why, she'd even managed to go more than a year without spewing any of her usual vitriolic rhetoric about eradicating autistic people. When she appealed to parents to donate video footage of their children for a new promotional campaign, she didn't raise much suspicion as to her intentions.

As for Alfonso Cuarón, the other arrogant fool I put the curse on—well, that inept excuse for a filmmaker has offended so many high-placed people in magical society that I'm surprised he hasn't gotten an Unforgivable Curse put on him yet. If it weren't bad enough that he caricatured our lives for the entertainment of common Muggles, he didn't even pay any attention to the details. I mean, really, who doesn't know that werewolves have hair? And showing that unkempt, ill-mannered little hooligan Hermione Granger as a paragon of fashion. Puh-leeze!

Now, I'm quite clever if I do say so myself. But even though my outstanding talents are widely renowned, I wasn't expecting when I put the Underpants Curse on Wright and Cuarón that both of them would reveal their true selves so thoroughly in one fell swoop. What could they have been thinking when they decided to make their "I Am Autism" video, which—just like the short-lived and widely condemned Ransom Notes ad campaign—portrays autistics as kidnapped by an evil monster and intolerable burdens on society? This explanation is as good as any (though I must say it's rather disrespectful toward my stellar reporting).

Whatever their reasoning or lack thereof might have been, their Bigots-R-Us store-brand underpants are now on display for the whole world to see. Nobody who watches that video will ever again think of Cuarón as anything but a third-rate propagandist. As for Suzanne Wright, if enough outraged autistics and their friends and family members take action, this might finally be the moment where Autism Speaks' true colors as a hate group become so obvious that its sponsors all jump off the sinking ship with their little furry tails twitching anxiously as they swim off into the sunset.

Stay tuned—there's more to come. A lot more.

A Bit of Neighborly Advice

Guest post by Rita Skeeter, award-winning journalist and ultra-reliable source for all the dirt you've ever wanted to read.


Whilst slumming in the dismal wasteland that is Muggle television, I came across an ad by Autism Speaks called Neighbors, which makes the rather astounding suggestion that providing more therapies to autistic children would result in their having more friends. This can be done, according to the ad, through insurance mandate legislation.

Now, some therapies ought indeed to be made more widely available. Physical, occupational, and speech therapy can be very helpful to many children. In magical society, it's a matter of considerable importance to ensure that our little ones are provided with these therapies at an early age, if the need arises. After all, the study of witchcraft and wizardry can be quite difficult if one cannot hold magical objects firmly and recite spells clearly. If a young Hogwarts pupil stumbled over the words of an incantation, she might end up turning her hair into snakes, or something equally unpleasant. Even after the spell was reversed, I found it dreadfully scaly and hard to comb for weeks afterward. But I digress.

To be nothing but Muggle pretenders, Autism Speaks and Dr. Lovaas certainly have an overinflated idea of their own abilities. If there really were some sort of alchemy that could magically transform anyone into a friend, well, we'd all be drinking tea and playing friendly games of Quidditch with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, and I expect I'd be out of work. Granted, there are love potions and such, but they soon wear off. Turning people into true friends is a matter of time, effort, and shared interests—not of aping their mannerisms. There are no shortcuts or magical behavioral charms.

Besides, we all know why some children have no interest in befriending certain others, don't we? It's the same reason why so many witches and wizards from our most illustrious families have no use for Mudbloods—plain, simple, old-fashioned prejudice. There's no way to magically transform intolerance into something else by putting its targets in behavioral therapy for several hours a day, either. If the goal really is that all children should be friends and play happily with each other in their neighborhoods—well, they're going to have to be taught to accept and appreciate diversity, rather than excluding and abusing those who are different.

As long as we are on the subject of teaching children not to abuse others, if your little horrors—er, I meant to say little darlings—are the sort who like to stomp on insects, you should teach them to show kindness to all God's creatures. Even a beetle can suffer a nasty case of post-traumatic stress when it comes within millimeters of being squashed by a little boy's wretched smelly shoe. Especially if the beetle just happens to be an Animagus—not that I would have any firsthand experience of shape-shifting, of course…

Lovaas Safari Tours at Erik's Ranch

Guest post by Rita Skeeter, award-winning journalist and ultra-reliable source for all the dirt you've ever wanted to read.


You're probably wondering what a journalist of my incomparable reputation is doing on a lowly Muggle blog. Well, yesterday while I was working on a much more important article about the Ministry of Magic's investigation of marauding trolls in the countryside, I just happened to come across a blogger trying to fight off three trolls who had been lurking under a bridge. Of course, all I had to do was flap my lips a few times, and the trolls ran away screaming. I don't know why you inept Muggles can't manage that.

Out of the kindness of my heart, I took the blogger to a nearby tea shop and bought her a nice cup of tea to settle her nerves. Then I slipped a few drops of a truth potion into her cup when she wasn't looking. I never go anywhere without it, naturally. A few minutes later I had this blog's password, and I took the opportunity to do a bit of snooping. Well, wouldn't anybody?

In the drafts folder, I found a half-finished post about a proposed residential facility in Montana for autistic adults, called Erik's Ranch, whose advisory board includes the well known behaviorist Dr. Lovaas. Of course, he's not as well known as I am. Because I'm of the mind that all Mudbloods belong in institutions, I decided to rewrite the post to include a few of my own keen insights.

It seems that Dr. Lovaas' public image has been refurbished somewhat since the days when he boasted that he could cure autistic kids by slapping and screaming at them. Even the cleverly named Autism Speaks, which has never actually had any autistic people speaking for it, has jumped on the rickety old Lovaas bandwagon by touting ABA-centric autism insurance legislation. Now, I told the Wrights they ought to hire a witch or wizard to put a repair spell on that old bandwagon before the wheels fall off. Even a first-year Hogwarts student could do that. But did they listen to me? Nooooo, like all Muggles, they're much too full of themselves.

This morning, just because I don't like being ignored, I stuck a few pins into a voodoo doll where Suzanne Wright's heart ought to be. I still haven't figured out why it had no effect whatsoever. Not that I care what happens to anybody who's as incompetent as she is. I'll just point out here that You-Know-Who does a much more effective job of eradicating bothersome minority groups, as well as dealing with obvious Mudblood sympathizers like Brian Reichow of Vanderbilt University, who, along with his co-authors in a 2008 study, had this to say about autism treatment hype: “There have been a number of different reviews of evidence-based practices of treatments for young children with autism. Reviews which have critically evaluated the empirical evidence have not found any treatments that can be considered evidence-based.”

Humph!

Anyway, back to Erik's Ranch, which is described on its website as "a structured environment for lifelong learning that encourages participation by residents, and serves as a destination location to attract family and friends to share experiences with their loved one. The ranch will offer horseback riding, photo safaris and other ecotourism adventures…"

The website is full of nice warm fuzzy cheerful happy-sounding buzzwords like community, inclusion, and the often repeated phrase "lifelong learning." However, there's no mention of what happens when residents decide that they don't want to stay there lifelong. Too bad for them, I guess. They should've made more of an effort to become indistinguishable from their peers. Then they wouldn't have had to face the consequences of being, in the website's own terms, "children who didn’t make it to the recovery we all hoped for."

Residents will be given "work" opportunities (the website's authors are the ones who put the term "work" in quotes, which shows what they think of it) and will be placed in jobs as groundskeepers, tour guides, and other service positions. Visitors to the ranch will enjoy this fascinating opportunity to create photos and videos of the lovely Montana scenery and wildlife—and, presumably, of the curious behaviors of the savage autistic natives on the reservation. It'll be just like taking photos on an old-timey colonial safari a century ago, when the sun never set on the British Empire, and when nobody except common riff-raff cared about such foolishness as human rights and respecting the dignity of other cultures.

If I were in charge of running Erik's Ranch, though, I'd have better sense than to let the general public roam randomly around with video cameras. After all, what if a slapping and screaming incident, or some other abuse or molestation of a resident, ended up on the evening news? No hype-mongers worth their salt would risk letting their public image get out of control like that. It's all about careful manipulation of the media, people. But then Muggles can't be expected to have the natural journalistic savvy of a brilliant reporter such as myself. I figure they'll just have to learn the hard way.

Gotta run now—there's a hot new rumor about Harry Potter to investigate! I'll just put a Confundus Charm on this blog so that abfh will be too confused to notice the new post. Silly Muggles are always so easy to fool.