I worked for 4 years for a charity that supported young adults with ASD and the general understanding of the disorder from the public is pretty poor in the uk (although to be fair that was in the late 90s).
What I found was that we all have ASD traits at some level: the big problem ocurs with social learning. Most people (ironically) have a blind spot when trying to communicate with an autistic individual, often assuming that the words and phrases they use are universally understood (in implication, context etc).
I was always careful of saying questions like "Would you do this, please?" as this would sometimes get interpreted as "Wood, you do this please". One is a question and one is an instruction to somebody called Wood.
This leaves some autistic people appaer to 'get it' sometimes but not other times and in my experience this leads people to conclude that the autistic individual is being contrary or 'spoilt' as Savage implies.
Obviously this is not true. But I can see why he may say the things he does: he is simply not sufficiently knowledgable in this subject area to comment intelligently.
But then what can you expect from a know nothing know it all?
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