{"id":789,"date":"2012-02-02T11:10:00","date_gmt":"2012-02-02T19:10:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2012\/02\/nerds-autism-and-so-on.html"},"modified":"2012-02-02T11:10:00","modified_gmt":"2012-02-02T19:10:00","slug":"nerds-autism-and-so-on","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2012\/02\/nerds-autism-and-so-on.html","title":{"rendered":"Nerds, Autism and So On"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span>THE writer Ben Nugent just had a funny and serious <a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2012\/02\/01\/opinion\/i-had-asperger-syndrome-briefly.html?scp=1&#038;sq=benjamin%20nugent&#038;st=cse\">op-ed<\/a> on the New York Times about being falsely diagnosed, as a kid, with the form of autism often associated with musical and mathematical genius. (&#8220;<span>FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late \u201990s,&#8221; the piece begins, &#8220;I had Asperger syndrome.&#8221;) Turns out he was just an awkward, artsy teenager who had not found his tribe.\u00a0<\/span><span>It&#8217;s really worth reading, whether you know anything about the condition or not.\u00a0<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div><a href=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-egK_0OYK5nQ\/TyrfXf4eb2I\/AAAAAAAABQI\/CiDygOgJDz0\/s1600\/Revengeofthenerdsposter.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"320\" src=\"http:\/\/1.bp.blogspot.com\/-egK_0OYK5nQ\/TyrfXf4eb2I\/AAAAAAAABQI\/CiDygOgJDz0\/s320\/Revengeofthenerdsposter.jpg\" width=\"211\"><\/a><span>A few years back I spoke to Nugent, who I knew from his Elliott Smith bio and a story I&#8217;d written on songcraft, about his book<i> American Nerd: The Story of My People<\/i>. The book is a serious look at a despised and misunderstood figure &#8212; one Nugent has long identified with. <a href=\"http:\/\/articles.latimes.com\/2008\/jun\/15\/entertainment\/ca-nerd15\">Here<\/a> is my conversation with him.\u00a0<\/span><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE writer Ben Nugent just had a funny and serious op-ed on the New York Times about being falsely diagnosed, as a kid, with the form of autism often associated with musical and mathematical genius. (&#8220;FOR a brief, heady period in the history of autism spectrum diagnosis, in the late \u201990s,&#8221; the piece begins, &#8220;I [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[40,34],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-789","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-indie","7":"category-literary","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=789"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}