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Aflac Axes Ads after Savage’s Obnoxious Autism Remarks

Aflac has decided to pull all of its ads from the Michael Savage radio show, The Savage Nation, following the host’s incendiary remarks last week about autistic children.

While the company understands that radio hosts pick on any number of targets, Savage’s comments about autistic children were “both inappropriate and insensitive,” said an Aflac spokesperson (via The New York Times).

Michael Savage, whose audience ranks in size only behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity and whose show is heard on more than 350 radio stations, described 99 percent of children with autism as “a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.” He said autistic children haven’t been told by parents not to “act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life.”

Autism United, a coalition of organizations that advocate on behalf of autistic children, protested Monday outside the studios of WOR (710 AM) in New York City.

A spokesman for WOR said, in an e-mail statement, that the views expressed by Michael Savage were his views and were not those of WOR Radio. “We regret any consternation that his remarks may have caused to our listeners.”

Savage, however, has stood by his remarks and said he has no intention of apologizing. Angry parents and autism advocates have called for his firing. In a statement on his website, Savage says: “My comments about autism were meant to boldly awaken parents and children to the medical community’s attempt to label too many children or adults as ‘autistic.’

“Just as some drug companies have overdiagnosed ADD and ADHD to peddle dangerous speed-like drugs to children as young as 4 years of age, this cartel of doctors and drug companies is now creating a national panic by overdiagnosing autism, for which there is no definitive medical diagnosis!”

Radio hosts have come under scrutiny for letting their comments get out of hand several times in the last year, since shock jock Don Imus was let go by CBS Radio following his racially charged comments about the Rutgers women’s basketball team in April 2007. CBS’s talk duo Opie & Anthony was suspended by XM Satellite Radio for 30 days, after a guest known as Homeless Charlie talked on the show about having sex with Condoleeza Rice, Laura Bush and Queen Elizabeth, and left-of-center host Randi Rhodes quit Air America for a smaller liberal start-up after she was suspended for abusive and obscene language regarding Hilary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro, among others.

When Imus eventually returned to talk radio on WABC, he did so with many familiar advertisers from his CBS Radio days.