Some radio stations drop "The Savage Nation"

From The New York Times July 23:

A group of seven Mississippi talk radio stations owned by Telesouth
Communications has dropped Michael Savage’s nationally syndicated radio program over comments the host made last week suggesting that nearly every child with autism was “a brat” of inattentive parents.

“Michael Savage’s comments about autistic children were beyond inexcusable and are unacceptable,” the station group said in a statement posted Tuesday on its Web site, supertalkms.com. The cancellation follows the decision on Monday by Aflac, the insurance company, to pull its advertising from the show.

On his Web site, Michaelsavage.com, the host posted a letter on Monday in which he iterated the central point he said he had been trying to make on his July 16 program: that autism is too often misdiagnosed in the cases of children, or falsely diagnosed, at least partly as a means of wringing resources. “Let the truly autistic be treated,” he wrote. “Let the falsely diagnosed be free.”

On July 16, Mr. Savage referred to autism as “a fraud, a racket,” and asserted that what “99 percent” of children with autism most needed was a parent willing to tell them things like, “Don’t act like a moron.” Mark Masters, chief executive of Talk Radio Network, which syndicates Mr. Savage’s program to more than 350 stations, did not return messages left at his office seeking comment.