CBS' 60 Minutes is doing a segment tomorrow night on autism and iPads. Leslie Stahl talks about interviewing Temple Grandin in the segment above. Stahl is enthusiastic about Dr. Grandin, even affectionate.
So why does this segment make me uncomfortable?
Part of it is the enthusiasm Stahl shows for Dr. Grandin's role as "self-narrating zoo exhibit." I appreciate her ability to describe autism a great deal, but I cringe when the journalist gushes at her ability to tell us about autism "from inside." Yes, Dr. Grandin's expertise in autism comes from having lived it. But it also comes from having studied it, for years, with a mind that revolutionized an entire industry. Over half the beef eaten in the United States is processed in plants that Dr. Grandin helped to design. Her work in developing standards for handling cattle has done more to alleviate the pain and suffering of animals than PETA can ever hope to do.
Her work in the cattle industry is not even mentioned here, which is not unlike doing a segment on Steve Jobs, without ever saying "Apple" or even "computer."
Dr. Grandin is a genius, who has studied autism intensely. Those two things are at least as important to the brilliance of what she has to say about autism as the fact that she herself has it.
But Stahl seems delighted and bemused, exactly as she would if one of the cows Dr. Grandin studies suddenly began to speak. And stated that it would prefer to remain a cow! Mindblowing!
She really seems to be unable to grasp an important idea, even though it is stated bluntly as the theme of the movie based on Dr. Grandin's life:
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It just does not seem to occur to this veteran journalist, no dummy or stranger to discrimination, that a brain that is different could actually be as good as a typically developing one. They talk about Dr. Grandin's unusual MRI, which shows one highly developed "highway" for language output, rather than the four smaller paths usually seen.
And Stahl says this:
"The other three gnarl and break up and go off in all kinds of wrong directions."
Different, Leslie, not wrong.
Because although the development of those parts of Dr. Grandin's brain is probably part of what causes her to have impaired language, there is no way to know that those same develpments are not also partially responsible for her brilliance.
When Dr. Grandin tries to explain to her that without autistic people, there could not be a CBS, Stahl laughs a little and says, "Half my colleagues, huh?" It's condescending, but it's also more than that. She thinks the suggestion that she really might be working with people whose brains are more like Dr. Grandin's than her own is a joke.
I wasn't amused by how Stahl discusses the feelings she had during the interview:
"I was interviewing her. . . and I loved her. I did, I loved her. And I don't think she felt anything toward me at all. It was a strange thing, 'cause it wasn't really an interaction. I don't even know why I loved her."
I understand why she loved Dr. Grandin: she's extremely charismatic and radiates compassion, or at least that was my experience when I met her. I loved her, too. And I'm also pretty sure she didn't feel anything in particular about me. I don't expect interactions I have with people like her, or Ari Ne'eman, or John Elder Robison, to mean anything to them, even though they are intensely important to me. I know who they are. If I'm writing about the experience, they are the story.
Does Stahl think that other famous people she interviews feel things toward her? Really? Because that seems insane to me.
And why wasn't this interview really an interaction? What I think she means is that it did not feel like the interactions she is used to and was perhaps not entirely satisfactory to her. But that is still an interaction.
Different, but real.