The Guy from 'Mallrats' Will NOT Let You Say Anything Negative About Gus Walz

Before I get to the meat of this, I want to say something about the overall reaction to Tim Walz’s 17-year-old son, Gus Walz, tearfully pointing at his father and saying, “That’s my dad,” during Coach Walz’s speech last night accepting the VP nomination. I’ve read a ton of reactions on social media — maybe 200 or 300, because the warmth that the Internet has for Gus Walz is enough fuel to heat the entire state of Maine this winter.

Of all of those responses, I’ve seen maybe four mean/negative/joyless/asshole responses that have been reposted multiple times, including Ann Coulter, who called the kid “weird” but soon deleted the tweet because the Internet came for her. The positive-to-negative response ratio is probably 200-1, and I don’t know how many people I have seen who have offered to be Gus’s aunt, bodyguard, or guardian angel. Notwithstanding the handful of negative responses, the outpouring of love for Tim Walz’s family has been remarkable and beautiful.

One other thing that might be confusing for some who hear that Gus Walz is neurodivergent and has a nonverbal learning disorder is that 1) neurodivergent does not necessarily mean that he is on the autism spectrum. People on the spectrum are neurodivergent, but neurodivergence includes a wide range of differences in brain function and behavioral traits, including ADHD, which Gus has been diagnosed with. Moreover, because the right loves to split hairs (see the bullshit IUI/IVF distinction that J.D. Vance continues to make), a non-verbal learning disorder does not mean that Gus Walz is nonverbal; it just means he has visual-spatial struggles and motor-skill deficits (for the record, Gus also has a social anxiety disorder).

With that out of the way, do you folks remember Jeremy London? The guy from Mallrats, Party of Five, and Seventh Heaven? We don’t see him much anymore, but he is still very active in low-budget movies — he literally has 115 acting credits on his IMDb page.

Anyway, he’s raising his “grandbaby” (tell me you grew up in the South without telling me you grew up in the South), and he shared his experience in the context of Gus Walz expressing his affection for his father. Like many others, he also warned that if people come after Gus, he will show a side of himself that he didn’t even know he had. Seriously: There’s like ten million people who have essentially offered to be Gus Walz’s human shield. Humanity is pretty great, sometimes.

Post by @joshgad

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