Looking Back at 2008: Tropic Blunder, Savage Words

Today continues our look back on 2008 through round-ups of stories that made the news on this About.com Parenting Special Needs blog. Check the entries for May, June, July, and August, and think back to when Michael Savage called autism a scam, autistic kids got kicked out of classrooms and churches and restaurants and airplanes, and Tropic Thunder kicked up a storm among advocates for people with developmental disabilities. Read up on those mid-2008 events, and tell us which one ticked you off the most in the poll at right.

Sometimes the biggest stories aren't the ones that get the biggest response from readers. Below is a list of the posts for each month that got any comments at all. Can you guess which ones got the most? Check the monthly recaps to find out.

May:

• Inclusion and the Myth of the Magical Mainstream
• Vaccinations Cause Fainting in Teens
• Getting a Good Goodbye
• Summer Dilemma: Work or Play?
• Wordless Wednesday: Fun With Body Sox
• An Early Mother's Day Gift
• Site of the Day: Take a Stand
• Your Comments on Inclusion and the Magical Mainstream
• An Ode to Two Bad Weeks
• Recycling, eLearning, and More Fun Things to Do
• The Patient Is Fine, But the Fit Is Funny
• Texting Teens to Remember Their Meds
• Wordless Wednesday: Chalk Talk
• Understanding Medical Consequences, and Medical Force
• An Opening for Locks
• In the Forum: What Am I Dealing With?
• Does Your Faith Community Hate You This Much?
• Judging Disruptive Behavior in Church
• Wordless Wednesday: Toy Traffic
• U.S. Currency Violates Rights of the Vision-Impaired
• Badges? They Need Some Stinking Badges!
• Site of the Day: Action Alert on Autistic Student Voted Out of Class
• What Are You Doing This Memorial Day?
• Site of the Day: Study on Positive Growth in Parents
• A Memorial Day to Remember
• Wordless Wednesday: Keys to His Heart
• The Perils of Preemptive Arguing
• Researchers Working on Healthy Video Games

June:

• Wordless Wednesday: Boy and Dog
• Another Thing to Add to Your List of Fears: Dry Drowning
• Wordless Wednesday: Crafty Crawlers
• Researchers Look at St. John’s Wort and ADHD, For Some Reason
• Diane Sawyer Thinks We're Beautiful and Heartbroken
• Let Alex Barton Know That He's Special
• Sunday Quotations: A Father's View
• Wordless Wednesday: Special-Needs Beach Reads
• Why I Volunteer
• Site of the Day: Specs for Us
• Is It Ever Okay to "Give Up" on Reading?
• Is This a Good Sign or a Bad Sign?
• Site of the Day: Crickweb
• There Are Worse Things Than Being a Wimp

July:

• My Son, the Working Stiff
• As Long As You're Kicking Autistic Kids Out of Church ...
• Failing Children in Special Education
• Whose Public Space Is It, Anyway?
• Preventing a Mickey Mouse Meltdown
• Subduing My Inner Mama Bear
• Nor Do I Want to Hear It in Church, at a Restaurant, or on a Plane
• How About "The Special-Needs-Child Borrowers"?
• Summer Homework Blues
• More Special-Needs TV I’d Like to See
• If Our Kids Turned in Their Homework This Late, They’d Be in Trouble
• Hate the Sin, Love the Sinner

August:

• Know Your Parenting Special Needs Site: Love Notes for Special Parents
• Tropic Thunder Blasted by Disability-Rights Groups
• Keeping Kids Safe in School Is Everybody’s Responsibility
• Satire Means Never Having to Say You're Sorry
• Five Twitter Tweeters I'd Happily Follow
• Our Gold Medalist: Debbie Phelps
• From the Department of Depressing Statistics
• Sarah Palin Is the Republican VP Nominee!

What mid-2008 news stories meant the most to you? Share your memories in the comments.

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