If I could have a moment of your time?

Are they demonizing Sheldon though? Are they using Sheldon to make an attack on autistic people or any aspect of autism? The Third Reich demonized jews and other minority groups to use them as scapegoats. Do you feel that the portrayal of Sheldon is that discriminatery?

I'd have more objection to TV police/detective programmes that have an autistic seeming character as a stooge/fall-guy in the plot. Lewis and Frost have done this in episodes often repeated. There was one on the TV last night (that series with the big lass from Birds of a Feather in a lead role) - the prime suspect was an unlikely looking autistic boy. Time after time autism is used in the plot in an exploitative way.

I also think some fictional detectives, especially Sherlock Holmes, are being presented more and more as if autistic.

The thing with Sheldon is the script-writers claim he's not meant to be autistic, although he does look a bit like a parody on rain man. But the thing is society is full of people like this, and at the moment they don't get diagnosed as autistic. Think about it, what is most GP's reaction to someone with lots of PhD's, and in work, who can make eye contact?  Oh that cannot possibly be autism.

Remember the percentage of people on the spectrum who don't find long term employment. If TV programmes started exploiting Cameron's current scheme of including people on the autistic spectrum, and other disabled, as if they are scroungers and work shy (an easy abuse for a naive Eton public schoolboy to pick on the less privileged), that I would perceive as an abuse of autism on TV. But it hasn't happened.....yet...

To be honest Sheldon might be doing us some good.

Are they demonizing Sheldon though? Are they using Sheldon to make an attack on autistic people or any aspect of autism? The Third Reich demonized jews and other minority groups to use them as scapegoats. Do you feel that the portrayal of Sheldon is that discriminatery?

I'd have more objection to TV police/detective programmes that have an autistic seeming character as a stooge/fall-guy in the plot. Lewis and Frost have done this in episodes often repeated. There was one on the TV last night (that series with the big lass from Birds of a Feather in a lead role) - the prime suspect was an unlikely looking autistic boy. Time after time autism is used in the plot in an exploitative way.

I also think some fictional detectives, especially Sherlock Holmes, are being presented more and more as if autistic.

The thing with Sheldon is the script-writers claim he's not meant to be autistic, although he does look a bit like a parody on rain man. But the thing is society is full of people like this, and at the moment they don't get diagnosed as autistic. Think about it, what is most GP's reaction to someone with lots of PhD's, and in work, who can make eye contact?  Oh that cannot possibly be autism.

Remember the percentage of people on the spectrum who don't find long term employment. If TV programmes started exploiting Cameron's current scheme of including people on the autistic spectrum, and other disabled, as if they are scroungers and work shy (an easy abuse for a naive Eton public schoolboy to pick on the less privileged), that I would perceive as an abuse of autism on TV. But it hasn't happened.....yet...

To be honest Sheldon might be doing us some good.