It's been a while since I've posted an update about the case of Alex Barton. Alex, who has been diagnosed with Asperger's (a form of autism), was voted out of his kindergarten class last spring after his teacher, Wendy Portillo, became frustrated with his behavior. She decided to discipline him by asking his classmates to state what they didn't like about him and then took a vote on whether or not Alex should be allowed in their classroom. Alex was voted out 14-2. The St. Lucie school board suspended Ms. Portillo for one year without pay, suspended her teaching license and revoked her tenure status. She is currently in the process of appealing this decision.

As for Alex and his family, they are grateful for the support they received and are currently keeping busy forming a chain of connection to other kids on the autism spectrum through The Tie Dye Project.

Alex has tie dyed five shirts and is mailing them out to other children with ASD and related needs. When a child receives a his or her shirt, that child will then make five shirts of their own to send to five other children with autism.

The project still need participants. Teachers are encouraged to take part in this effort as well. If you would like to participate in the Tie Dye Project email your contact information to Melissa Barton at mommyofalex@justiceforalexbarton.com or visit Alex's blog at http://blog.justiceforalexbarton.com/ for more details.

Why did I go anyway? Because the movie is a satire that also features Robert Downey Jr. in black face, which can be extremely offensive itself. I'm a huge fan of comedy that employs satire, sarcasm and irony, but I know these can be incredibly hard to pull of. (As I realize each time my own self-satire on this site goes unrecognized as humor and falls pathetically flat.) The reception of satirical humor depends a great deal on who the audience is, and I simply don't trust other people to interpret it for me, nor do I feel I can judge fairly from out of context snippets. (Um, and also, I really, truly love Jack Black and was so looking forward to this movie.) So, I decided to suspend judgment until I had seen the movie myself.

And after I saw it, I had some more thoughts on the controversy, but I also asked myself if the movie was worth seeing or not, independent of these issues? Well, not really. The movie did have some scenes that were quite funny. I was thinking of the Junky's Wife and laughing until I couldn't breathe during Jack Black's character's desperate attempts to get heroin. Robert Downey Jr. did a good job of handling the racially charged "n-word" and pulling off his his self-mocking use of black face. But Tropic Thunder wasn't wasn't consistently well done or consistently entertaining. It's not something you're going to quote for years or even remember for long after it leaves the theaters; it's a unevenly fun two hour distraction, much like Don't Mess with the Zohan.

But back to that controversy. What I found surprising was that the dialogue about disability that I found most deeply hurtful hasn't been mentioned in any of the press I've seen, which has focused exclusively on the use of the offensive word "retarded." I was disturbed by one quick scene in particular, in which agent Rick Peck (played by Matthew McConaughey) asks superstar Tugg Speedman (played by Ben Stiller) how Speedman's attempts to adopt a child are going. When Speedman tells him the adoption process has been fraught with complications, Peck looks at a picture of himself with a developmentally delayed middle-school-aged boy, who appears later in the movie wearing a bib, and says, "At least you get to pick yours."

Of course, I'm lifting Peck's line out of context, and you might think (as I would) that perhaps this was meant to mock Peck's character rather than his son. Sadly, no. The implication was that if one could choose to have one's own disabled child or another child free from disabilities, the wish would clearly be to have another child. But alas, those who have with children with disabilities are simply stuck with the unhappy burden of a despised and disappointing disabled child. And the movie did portray that view as one the audience ought to understand and sympathize with. One that should (but fortunately didn't, in our theater) bring a big laugh.

And that was what I found really awful. I know many parents of children with disabilities, different abilities or those quirky superpowers that just don't fit well in so many parts of this life. And we love our kids, fiercely. We love them in the face of those, like the makers of Tropic Thunder, who cruelly find them worthless and and think we ought to too. We love them, because we see them as the full and beautiful human beings they are.

So, I'm here to say that, on the whole, I love Ben Stiller, Jack Black, Robert Downey Jr. and their movies. And because I do, I went to see this one in spite of the negative press. But now, having seen the work as a whole, I do agree that the portrayal of people with disabilities in this movie is inflammatory and derogatory. Far from adding to the humor of the film, it detracted from my enjoyment. Tropic Thunder would have been a better and more consistently funny film if, among other things, the portrayal of disabilities was actually used as satire, rather than as cheap mocking or cartoon slapstick.

Skip Tropic Thunder because it's offensive or skip it because it's not a great film, but either way, my recommendation is to skip it. (Unless you're the Junky's Wife, in which case you should totally rent it to watch Jack Black offering blow jobs for heroin.)