As promised, today I start a series on AM radio's favorite conservative voices. I'll start with Michael Savage (nee Weiner).
From a ratings perspective Savage is fourth in the country. But on the loony tunes meter, Michael is top of the pile. His rants are so hate filled and unhinged, not even Fox News will touch him.
Despite lacking Beck's and Hannity's base of Fox News viewing morons ready to open their wallets for any product they plug, Savage has been able to sell millions of books virtually single-handedly. From strictly a marketing perspective that's quite an achievement. Even more so when you consider the caliber of garbage his books are filled with.
Like Beck, Savage is not content to simply portray Obama as a leftist/socialist/communist/anarchist/fascist out to do something diabolical to the country. In Savage's mind, Obama is a "pan Leninist" out to install himself as a lifetime dictator/demigod. Obama also wants to destroy capitalism, cast the rich into the streets, and of course set up concentration camps for anyone who disagrees with him.
Savage readily parrots each and every right wing talking point as gospel truth. He never discusses the possibility that maybe the charge is embellished, distorted or complete bullshit. But he goes further. After the Deep Water Horizon exploded and sunk, Savage floated the hilarious theory that the rig was, in fact, sunk by a North Korean sub patrolling the Gulf. This in addition to regularly questioning Obama's faith and citizenship. But again with Savage, this is just par for the course.
Savage is also one of the angriest, most caustic radio hosts in the country. Everything sucks to him. Of course, if I was an arch conservative, educated at Berkeley, and living in San Francisco, I'd be pissed off all the time too. The guy is surrounded by everything he hates: gays, liberals, foreigners, etc.. No wonder he is a seething cauldron of rage.
In a departure from his right wing radio brethren, Savage is prodigiously educated, possessing a BA in sociology, Masters' in ethnobotany and anthropology and finally a Ph.D. in nutrional ethnomedicine. This background makes his fact-free on air rants even more puzzling. In an even weirder turn, Savage spent parts of life associating with people such as Timothy Leary and beat poet Allen Ginsberg. I don't mean to spend so much time on his life, but it defies logic that someone with Savage's education and liberal life experience could become such a miserable conservative.
When not "educating" us on the non-existent parallels between Obama and the rise of Nazism, Savage rails against illegal immigrants, Muslims and gays or informs his listeners as to how uninformed, poorly educated or stupid they are. Why callers continue to reverently refer to him as "Dr. Savage" is beyond me.
His rants against Muslims are particularly ugly. For instance, on today's edition of his show, he pointed out how historically Muslims would desecrate their fallen opponents by dismembering them in attempt to paint them all as murderous savages. Savage went on to condemn President Clinton's 1995 bombing of Serbian positions as political payback to foreign Heads of State including Javier Solana of Spain. He failed to mention Serbian shelling of Sarajevo which provoked the bombing, or surprise surprise Serbian ethnic cleansing of Muslims. On the December 17th edition of his show, he linked the growing Muslim presence in London to increased rates of tuberculosis in that city.
Savage doesn't let illegal immigrants off the hook. In his mind, they are a blight on the US population despite he himself being the son of immigrants. He blames them for damn near every problem in California. To Savage, they are nothing more than purveyors of crime, disease and drugs bent on draining the state of every social service dollar they can, all the while ignoring the significant contributions illegals make to local economies by purchasing lodging, food, clothing and other essentials. Multiculturalism is a four letter word to Michael. Apparently, the whole "melting pot" thing ended once his family hit Ellis Island and fuck everyone else.
Michael also hates gays. He's had quite a time attacking the Don't Ask Don't Tell debate, despite the overwhelming consensus of the public and the military (with the notable exception the Marine Commandant) that it should be repealed. There has been a lot of online speculation about the source for Savage's gay bashing. The theory is that Michael had impure relations with Allen Ginsberg and loathed himself for it. It's plausible enough, yet I don't believe it, especially not without corroboration. I've heard there is a Savage autobiography out there confirming this, though conveniently it's out of print and can't be found.
Sorry, Savage may be many things but I don't think he's a latent homosexual.
Finally, Michael hates non Christians. This is kind of an offshoot of the Muslim thing, but I think it deserves special attention due to Savage's stultifying hypocrisy on the subject. He claims not to really be of any faith, yet regularly reads scripture on air, claims to know more about it than actual Christians, and viciously attacks anyone not a Jew or a Christian. In the plus column, he has on occasion spoken favorably of Buddhist philosophy (though for my money his interpretation of Buddhism is a little off).
To round it out, Savage also regularly derides women and pretty much any other non white, non Christian, non American demographic.
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