Conan O'Brien, your cousin's starting to get on my NERVES

My sister may love your cousin, Denis Leary, but nowadays he's getting on my nerves. And he has a big mouth too when it comes to dissing autistic people such as myself.

Denis Leary confessed that he "got sucked into the vortex of Oprah" even though he sought to mock her in Why We Suck.

By Donna Freydkin, USA TODAY
NEW YORK — Denis Leary's Why We Suck: A Feel Good Guide to Staying Fat, Loud, Lazy and Stupid isn't even out yet, and already the book has caused something of an uproar.

His biting tome of tirades and rants about relationships, race and religion hits stores Tuesday (Viking, $24.95). But there's one chapter in particular that has been making waves: "Autism Shamautism," in which he rants about parents who push for a diagnosis primarily so their kids can get special treatment.

"For me, the reason for writing the chapter was because I know people who have children with autism, and I'm offended by people actually trying to seek out a low-level diagnosis for their kids because they're too lazy to deal with their kids' behavior," Leary says.

Leary, 51, is a married father of two teenagers. And over pasta at a downtown Italian restaurant, the actor/comedian (he also plays a troubled firefighter on FX's Rescue Me) explains that he's still miffed over the reports that led to autism advocates' outrage. He says the offending excerpt, first published in the New York Post, was taken out of context, leaving the impression that Leary was attacking parents of autistic children.

"If I was a person in the same shoes as a lot of the people who read it, I would be just as upset, because it looked like I was talking about the opposite. It really made me angry that that was the way it was painted," he says. "I was a comedy doctor discussing autism, not a real doctor defining autism."

In fact, Leary describes his comedy book as his acerbic, bracing stand-up act, but in print. He attacks religion, family life and pop culture, skewering cats, the Kardashian sisters and Britney Spears.

"I wrote the book because I think it's funny. My track record's pretty good. And as a comedian I've been accused of a lot of things — shocking, controversial, loud. Never stupid. I've never been called stupid. I stand by what I wrote."

Does he worry about offending people? "Oh, yeah. There's plenty of people to be offended. In my introduction, I try to warn everybody."

Initially, Leary set out to trash Oprah Winfrey in print, but the more he immersed himself in her show, the more he became a convert.

"The Oprah thing completely turned around on me. As soon as I started doing the research, I got sucked into the vortex of Oprah. I started watching episodes and reading the magazine. There's no male Oprah."

According to Leary, it's time for the Y-chromosome version of the show. "Guys would listen. It could be me and Jon Stewart. You do the joke news, you do the scores because Stewart's a complete sports junkie," Leary says. "If they can update you on things that might affect your sexual performance, I would watch that show. Or how to pick up chicks or how to make your wife happy."

Leary doesn't have pretensions of literary grandeur. His wife is writer Ann Leary, whose novel Outtakes from a Marriage was well-received this year, and her husband gives her full credit for being the real writer in the family.

"My book was inspired by money. I just wanted to see if I could do it," he says. "I told her: 'You wrote a real book. It's not the same thing as this.' She kept telling me how easy it was going to be because I didn't have to worry about plotlines."

Will he write another book? "I don't know," he says. "When I started writing, I really loved it. Sometimes I wrote (garbage), but I really loved it. … Obviously I wasn't writing a real book, and it was kind of easy.

"If this book sells, I'll have to do Why We Still Suck."