Salon: America's laziest fascist (Michael Savage)

[kskiska]

Infamous shock jock Michael Savage bombed in a bizarre, half-baked stage show this week, but his 6 million listeners just heard him call for the U.S. to murder millions of Arabs. Does the FCC care?

Michael Savage doesn't get out much. The hardcore conservative radio host of "The Savage Nation" has always been a relatively reclusive figure. He doesn't do book tours or publicity stunts. He's not exactly approachable either: He claims to carry a gun with him at all times, and he doesn't like nosy journalists asking for interviews.

Not that he's the shy, retiring type. Lately, as the Iraq torture scandal has dominated the headlines, he has taken to calling Arabs "non-humans" and has called for the U.S. to kill "thousands" of Iraqi prisoners and nuke a random Arab capital. Deciding whether to pay attention to Savage has always been tricky, though. It's never clear whether he really believes what he says in his tirades or if they are simply ploys for public outcry. His is currently the third-most-popular radio program in the nation. Nonetheless, it may be hard for Savage to sit by and watch the FCC's crackdown against fellow jock Howard Stern effectively lift Stern's profile even higher into the stratosphere. But Savage's outbursts are often so unhinged, so vicious, that ignoring them seems irresponsible, especially when so many Americans apparently are nodding in agreement. So when I learned that Savage would be making his first public appearance in three years Saturday night, it seemed worth checking out, if only to see who was paying attention to him and why.

"Savage Uncensored," as the event was called, marked the end of what's been a crummy year for the once-hot Savage. Last March, MSNBC gave him a weekly program only to cancel it after four months when he labeled a caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die." Then the San Francisco radio station that gave him his first big break dumped him and rubbed salt into the wound with billboards that depicted Savage morphing into Sean Hannity, beneath the slogan "Out With the Old, In with the New." When a couple of anti-Savage Web sites started a boycott of his advertisers, his syndicator, Talk Radio Network, tried to revoke their domain names. When that failed, it tried to sue them for $1 million. That failed too.

more…
http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/05/20/savage/index.html

[TheFarseer]

1. I used to think Savage was

just speaking in hyperbole to make his point. Now I think he's just freaking crazy! I'm scared if alot of people actually believe what he says and think his wacked-out half-baked ideas are real solutions to the real problems this country faces. In his defense though, he is no Bush stooge. He does NOT like bush. He's just a crazy old man.

[IronLionZion]

5. He doesn't like arabs, immigrants, gays, etc. either

The sad thing is that people do beleive what he says. I'm from a right-wing redneck mountain town and our only radio station plays the savage nation every afternoon. And people eat it up like it was candy or kool aid. I don't know if it's scary or just sad.

[IronLionZion]

2. Why pay any attention to Savage?

He's raving lunatic.

[struggle4progress]

10. Pay attention because there's eventually an effect:

It took the Serbian nationalists five or ten years of incessant hate propaganda before Serbs started killing their neighbors, but it finally happened.

Right wing hate radio certainly played a role in the right wing violence of the early and mid 1990s, and the voices are (if anything) even more strident now.

There's a real danger that among the people who listen seriously to Savage, some will eventually crack and resort to assault or murder.

There's no excuse for broadcasting this hateful cr*p in a civilized country, and the stations need to be held accountable.

[gold_bug]

11. that's right,

I have to wonder if rightwing terrorists like Krar and this guy in Illinois are getting pumped up on Savage's anti-Liberal propaganda. Where did the Illinois guy get the idea to kill Liberal politicians?

[cestmoi]

14. You draw an interesting comparison.

I'm a Canuck and our broadcast regulator the CRTC prevents shows like Savage's from being aired, it won't even allow O'Rielly to broadcast (much to his contempt). It's not as if we don't have a pool of red-neck cretans but I think they get contained because they don't have the satisfaction of hearing their ignorant commentary broadcasted.

[belle]

15. Because unlike your average lunatic, he has a pretty big audience.

Unfortunately. Yeah, if there were any sanity and justice in the current media, Savage would be just another lunatic babbling to himself on a barstool, making a drunken pass at Ann Coulter and her friends as they flounce off to the ladies' room to coo over each others' engagement rings and discreetly puke in the toilet. Alas.

[glitch]

19. thanks for my first laugh out loud of the day! nt

[DieboldMustDie]

3. "'These are tough interrogations?' Savage asked.

'My father put me through tougher interrogations when I was 16!'"

Interesting! He seems to be saying he was physically and sexually abused as an adolescent. That would explain a lot.

[rhino47]

4. How does he get away with that crap?

Stern got booted for an ugly comment a caller said and hes gone.
I`m all for freedom of speech but cmon if you stern goes so should savage.

[IronLionZion]

7. God damn liberal media

They don't censor conservatives.

For the record, Savage despises Bush and tells his listerners that too. They'll still vote for Bush because they are very far-right racist nationalists.

[rhino47]

9. Kick for Hoeffel !!

wohoo just read that he has a very good chance of beating specter.
.

[wtmusic]

6. You think he would get tired of being bitter

Ohwell, suit yerself.

[whistle]

8. I think he suffering from PTSS....

...Post Traumatic Syphilis Syndrome. His brain is being eaten alive.

[Skittles]

12. I think he is one sick f*** too

something is terribly wrong with him; he is demented.

[DinahMoeHum]

13. That fella needs to be in a straightjacket and a padded cell. . .

Just finished reading the whole article.

He "bombed on his own turf"? LMAO !!


:evilgrin:

[Miss Authoritiva]

16. It's interesting that these guys never make it on TV.

Ranting and mouth-foaming just aren't telegenic. O'Reilly is about the limit, but FOX has got to do something about his kaleidoscopic splotchiness.

Are some of these guys breaking the law by inciting others to violence? Some of them come dangerously close. Would the FCC ever investigate and/or fine them? Probably not. It's much safer to stick with complaints about sexually explicit or "obscene" material. That's the American tradition.

[cedarteeth]

17. people bought that s**t?

i just read through "the Savage Nation" and, you know, i thought "well i though i was right, but it says right here that libralism is a mental illness, so i must be crazy!" anyone up for letting the sergeon general know about this?

[Judi Lynn]

18. Great final paragraph closing the article

Savage's unprofessionalism makes it easy for liberals to dismiss him as a crank. But that's an easy way to overlook his ever-more xenophobic, homophobic and authoritarian political message. Ultimately, his invective may be what keeps his listeners coming back for more. Savage says what many mainstream conservatives can't or won't. As frustration with the Bush administration's handling of the Iraq adventure and the war on terror grows, his message holds appeal for those who believe nothing but desperate measures will work against an increasingly hostile world. And so, Savage will keep calling for Iraqi prisoners to be sodomized with dynamite. If he's lucky, such antics may score him a public showdown with the FCC. Or perhaps he will finally rant his way into oblivion. Considering the recent developments in Iraq, even if Savage waits another three years to emerge from his veil of heavily armed privacy, there may be no shortage of fodder for his bizarre stage spectacle and the audience it attracts.
(snip/)

It's well worth the time sitting through the commercial to get a free day's pass to read this article, for people who haven't paid for a subscription. The description of his "act" which actually attracted a crowd is really thought-provoking.

Looks as if he has over-drunk or medicated during his earlier years. There's not much left of his "mind," and there are enough American psychopath fans to keep him in business.

On edit: Found an interesting item in a search for "Michael Savage" + "Allen Ginsberg:"

from the Salon.com piece, by David Gilson:

In 1974, Weiner moved to the San Francisco Bay Area. His family first settled in Fairfax, a sleepy town in Marin County that Michael Savage would lambaste three decades later as "un-Fairfax," hometown of "Taliban Rat Boy" John Walker Lindh. From there, he started making trips into San Francisco to hang around the North Beach literary scene. According to Stephen Schwartz, who was then a left-wing activist and writer, Weiner carried an unusual letter of introduction. "He had met Allen Ginsberg in Fiji," he recalls. "He had this photograph of himself swimming naked with Ginsberg." Poet and biographer Neeli Cherkovski says Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the owner of City Lights Bookstore, introduced him to Savage in 1976. "All I knew was that he was this hip guy who'd been traveling in the South Seas, finding ways to use tropical plants to help end diseases," he recalls. The two became friends. "We had a lot of fun times. He's very smart, intelligent and very lively," says Cherkovski, who is now writer-in-residence at San Francisco's New College. Weiner told Cherkovski that he dreamed of becoming a stand-up comic in the mold of Lenny Bruce and they talked of doing a comedy routine together.

But he didn't make the big splash he had hoped for. Schwartz says Weiner's increasingly bizarre behavior eventually alienated him from the North Beach crowd. "After he had been there a while, his personality began to change. He became much more aggressive. He would collar you and demand that you eat with him, listen to him," he says. According to Schwartz, Weiner openly carried a gun and made public scenes when he ran into his former friends and acquaintances. "He would come into Cafe Trieste and start yelling at me that I was a nobody and he was a somebody."

Today, Savage still has few kind words for his old lefty literary friends. In "The Savage Nation," he writes off City Lights as "that once-famous communist bookstore" and rips into an unnamed beat poet, calling him "latrine slime." "Now he just screams at us in the streets," sighs Ferlinghetti, who once went to Hawaii with Weiner and his family. He views Weiner's reincarnation as Michael Savage as "total opportunism," the crowning achievement of someone who was "always looking to make a fast buck" and "always trying to think up new schemes to get famous."
(snip/)

http://64.233.161.104/search?q=cache:KYZ8crCM0m4J:www.livejournal.com/users/rootedfool/39849.html+%22Michael+Wiener%22+%2B+%22Allen+Ginsberg%22&hl=en

On edit: Found a photo, Michael Savage in 1983


http://www.americanpolitics.com/20030707Koop.html

God, what the heck happened to him? He almost looked kind, and decent, and human in that one. Must have been one of his lucid moments.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

21. Woah!

"All I knew was that he was this hip guy who'd been traveling in the South Seas, finding ways to use tropical plants to help end diseases," he recalls. The two became friends. "We had a lot of fun times. He's very smart, intelligent and very lively," says Cherkovski

This does sound tragic. It looks like Wiener was into herbal medicine or something, which means he was trying to do something positive.

Tragic, when you think about it....how this "Dr Jeckyll" fellow morphed into that sick Mr Hyde we know as Michael Savage.

[Waverley_Hills_Hiker]

20. Im glad someone is calling this POS a fascist.....

...becuase thats just about right for this guy.

[donhakman]

22. Does anyone suspect that this Jewish Liberal from Brooklyn...

Michael Weiner aka Michael Savage was playing two ends against the middle? Besides not being very stable, he may simply have blown his wad and cover too soon regarding the Mexican illeagal alien amnesty by overtly turning against Bush prematurely. If he had waited he might have had a bigger conservative audience turning their back on Bush in September.

[colonel odis]

23. someone should sue the conglomerate owners of a station that carries him

if any rightie goes nuts and starts assaulting someone based on savage's or hannity's or whoever's rant, sue the station that broadcast it.

they try to sue bar owners that serve drinks to people who go out and kill families in their cars. wouldn't the same principle apply here?