Oprah and autism? asperger's? ANYONE?

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OK, Oprah is probably NT, isn't she? And I know MOST of us don't really like the whole Oprah kind of show, etc...BUT, she DOES get ALOT of people to listen to her.

With that said, has anyone on this board ever suggested that WE ALL start sending OPRAH letters/emails to attempt to get some of us ADULTS on a show to discuss OUR difficulties and how unfair NTs really are when they are expectng SO MUCH of us, and expecting everyone to be LIKE THEM?

Anyway, a thought...If anyone is in anyway interested, let's see if we can get something done. Again, I know many people here might not like her, but I really think that there needs to be a LOUD voice from the ADULT autism/asperger's community now in order to help all the children who are currently being diagnosed. Otherwise, they will have a very tough road ahead, tougher than ours...

Please consider this...if not Oprah, geez, maybe Larry King? Or maybe Oprah for girls and Larry King for the guys? I don't know, I just think we need to raise our voice, otherwise, the only voices out there seem to be from NTs about us...except one or two people diagnosed with autism...but one or two, should NOT speak for us all.

I know that when Larry King did the show about autism, he specifically asked about adults with autism and the response was "we don't really know of any..." Maybe bringing this up will get us somewhere so that adults have a voice, as much as the NTs mom have a voice right now for their children.

And yes, as a WP board, I don't mind if you tell me exactly what you think and that I've lost my mind...in fact, I welcome honestly...

It's a good idea if we could get lots of letters to her and make them really interesting. She gets NTs to pay attention. Maybe if Oprah took that aspergers test.....

I wrote Oprah a letter when all this s**t happened with my son. They put me on the Oprah mailing list, and I never heard a word.

Well, it seems like a good idea. The apropriatte thing to do is write to her a lot of people at the same time. For example, showering her with e-mails and/or letters this week (or the other week, or...), and constantly doing it. That's the only way she/they listen to us. It will at least, work better than one single e-mail every few months I think, and it's better to have Oprah for us than maybe letting CAN or Autism Speaks have her for them.

I have written to them a lot of them (talk show hosts)all, suggesting they do a show on this being use aspergers / autism people as many of the shows they have done it really seems like they have no idea.

But your right maybe we all should keep writing, or send them threads like this, otherwise they may never get it.

It would be nice to be able to reverse some of the damage that Jenny Mcarthy did on the topic of autism while on Oprah.

They won't read them. They're too busy. Look at their web site, and if they're going to do a show, then send them a response from the "be on the show" topic right on the web site. They will read that. But you need an angle, so think about it. Maybe write to Alex on this board first, and see what
his thoughts are. He's been on a lot of national television.

Luck.

Btdt

OK, I get what everyone is saying...Alex? How do I write him?

I think we need to figure something out (maybe with Alex) so that we can plan for that same "autism awareness month" or whatever that everyone ends up doing shows and everything else, and possibly come up through the website with a couple of forms/emails so that we can all be reminded to send the same week or month, a few months or more, whatever, before that autism month comes up...Honestly, I don't even know when the heck that month is, but I'm sure we can all figure it out.

Also, I thought that maybe between all of us we could figure something out so that one of us here could do a TED TALKS since autism is such a big subject nowadays...maybe that's a good fund raiser for all of us to scrape and figure out who could do the TED TALKS...

I think we figure out who is best to write up a simple email, get the ball rolling and then find as many known TV shows, especially Oprah/Larry King, maybe Anderson Cooper? So that we can get our voice out all at once...

Hey, I belong to a step-parents group on the internet and the founder there (a much smaller group, and not as big hype as this issue) was at least on COURT TV show...

I wonder if Oprah would worry that she can't trust aspies to behave themselves. Maybe they really like to hyper control what guests do on her show.

I think this is a great idea. I think it would be powerful to do a week of shower-mails to her, she will take notice! I also second that we choose folk such as Alex, one of the parents (Smelana?) and one of the older folks (perhaps someone that's been there, done that, is completely content with their aspieness and had a reasonably good career/marriage/financial situation to talk about).

Please let's do this!! !! ! Just set the date. Alex, can we advertise this at the top of WrongPlanet's heading so that everyone knows about it, too? I think it is a very, very positive thing to do.

Alex, as you seem to be the one who knows the ropes, do you want to see if we can discuss here or if you need to email me or need my help with starting this up, or helping out, etc...let me know...

I really do believe that people need to hear our voice...Yes, I think we need to show them ALL of the faces of autism/asperger's...

Could we put our heads together and get one writer to submit an article to Oprah's magazine? Maybe she'd get so much interest in the magazine article that she'd pay more attention to doing a show on AS. I'm just thinking that the magazine might be an easier way to get noticed.

You might think about getting Sigourney Weaver on board with this idea.
Sigourney Weaver