50 Cent: Apology Accepted

@50Cent has now apologized for the offending tweets that he made regarding autism and special needs children. I think it is our responsibility as those that criticized his comments to work just as diligently to let people know that he has apologized. Too often in these situations, it is the bad that gets spread around like wildfire and the apology gets none of the attention.

My 2 Cent

Copyright SPIN Magazine

With the holidays and an illness in the family, I have not been on top of everything autism as I usually am. It is also the reason for the lack of posts in recent weeks. Yesterday, it was 103 FREAKING DEGREES OUTSIDE… so I kept the kids inside and while they were playing and overloading on games and television… I was surfing and catching up.

The article that caught my eye was that the lovely Holly Robinson Peete wrote an open letter to Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson for having used autism as the basis of an insult in a tweet to somebody that pushed his buttons. Mr. Jackson’s tweet (which has since been deleted at Mrs. Robinson Peete’s request) was:

“@50cent: yeah I saw your pic fool u look autistic. I don’t want no special ed kids on my time line follow some body else."

I will give 50 the benefit of the doubt and say that I don’t believe that he honestly feels this way and that he meant these words in jest. Even if he was joking, it wasn’t a wise choice of words on the part of a guy who makes his living… using wisely chosen words.

STUPID Studies

Pregnancy Linked to Birth of Autistic Children

(Somewhere, USA) – A revealing new study today released from the Science Tribunal of the Uterine Pregnancy Investigation Department indicates that there are direct ties between women that have become pregnant and the birth of children that later become diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

So funny I forgot to laugh.

One of the goals of my advocacy is to create an open dialogue. This is the first post in which I am asking the reader to contribute and share ideas. Please participate. The more the merrier. This could be a complete disaster, or very interesting. Please keep it respectful and civil.

Since my decision to dive into advocacy, I have learned a great deal about social media; How to target interests, how to promote, how to have fun with, how to do research and gauge people’s reaction.

One of the tools that I use is TweetDeck. It is a great program that allows me to monitor several different interests. I have a sports stream for work and for my own personal enjoyment, and I also have an autism stream that I watch very closely. Through that stream I have met a lot of great, involved parents that are fighting like hell for their kids. It lifts me up every time I fire up TweetDeck because it is a constant reminder that my family is not in this battle alone.