Michael Savage

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Michael Savage (1942–) is the stage name for Michael Alan Weiner, an American conservative commentator on radio, who was given a Freedom of Speech Award by Talkers Magazine in 2007. He is considered to have some of the more extreme opinions on talk radio. He writes that he created the term "Compassionate Conservative" in 1994, and, for him, these words describe a "firewall of balance" that limits how far to the right his opinions go.[1]

On 12 September 2009, he was fired by San Francisco radio station KNEW, the third San Francisco station to do so, with the explanation "Here's your no-spin direct answer; we have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information. The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision."[2]

He is also a contributor to WorldNetDaily and NewsMax. In 2003, he was fired by MSNBC for anti-gay remarks. [3] He was a friend, in the 1970s, of Allen Ginsberg, and wrote a novel in 1983,Vital Signs, in which the protagonist said "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks." [4]

Recent reporting

On his website, now hosted by WorldNetDaily, the "Savage Manifesto" states a number of his goals, certainly not fitting a single ideology, including: [5]

  • Regulate Wall Street: End short selling. Try tycoons who profited from bailouts.
  • Give Israel four years to become self-sufficient. Cut off all foreign aid to all nations.
  • Have illegal aliens build a wall between the United States and Mexico, and then, repatriate them. Pay them a one-time worker fee.
  • North Korea. Destroy their launching platforms, impose a Naval blockade on all goods coming in or out, except food.
  • Make abortions illegal, except when the physical survival of the mother is threatened, to be determined by three medical doctors. Require Norplant for all women on welfare of childbearing age.
  • Mexico. Force Mexico to pay one barrel of oil for every illegal alien in the United States of America per month.

He is a supporter of the Birther Movement, accusing Barack Obama of being a Kenyan citizen.[6]

His website displays Geert Wilders' speech on Islam.

Lawsuits

He has sued the Council on American Islamic Relations for copyright infringement, because they rebroadcast a part of a show in which he referred to the Qur'an as "a throwback document" and a "book of hate."

What kind of religion is this? What kind of world are you living in when you let them in here with that throwback document in their hand, which is a book of hate... Don't tell me I need reeducation. They need deportation.[7]

He also joined in a suit against U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano and U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder over a report issued by the Department of Homeland Security, which warned that there might be increased risk of extremism among disaffected returned veterans. [8]

Opinions on journalists

After he played portions of a Barbara Walters interview with Hugo Chavez, he called her a "double-talking slut" continuing: "She's an empty mind-slut. She'd peddle anything for a ratings point....[a] mental prostitute...I think that the woman is vermin. I think she's dirt."

On August 7, 2006, he said of CNN's White House correspondent, Wolf Blitzer,

That's why the department store dummy named Wolf Blitzer, a Jew who was born in Israel, will do the astonishing act of being the type that would stick Jewish children into a gas chamber to stay alive another day. He's probably the most despicable man in the media next to Larry King, who takes a close runner-up by the hair of a nose. The two of them together look like the type that would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis.[9]

Blitzer was born in Germany but grew up in Buffalo, New York and attended the University of Buffalo, according to its alumni newsletter. [10]

Hate speech and Britain

He was banned from entry into Britain, in 2008, by Home Secretary Jacqui Smith, on grounds that he was among a group of "preachers of hate".

I think it’s important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country[11]

Education and academia

He holds a B.S. degree in biology and education from Queens College, in New York City, and taught high school science before returning to graduate school, receiving a Ph.D. from the University of California at Berkeley in Nutritional Ethnomedicine in 1978. Savage also holds two Master’s degrees in Medical Botany and Medical Anthropology from the University of Hawaii. (The degrees are under the name of Weiner, not Savage.)

Originally, he sought an academic career, originally in biology and then in journalism. Salon.com reported that he claimed both to have been banned from academic appointments due to his race and gender: ""I discovered I could not gain a professorship even after applying many times. My crime? I was a white male." In broadcast and on his book covers, Michael Weiner claimed, however, to have had a number of academic appointments in the sciences. A book he attempted to publish in 1994, "Immigrants and Epidemics, which claimed that Southeast Asian immigrants were bringing tuberculosis and other infectious diseases into the United States. After publishers rejected it, he rented a studio and created the Michael Savage persona. [12]

In 1996, after having written approximately 20 books in medical botany and related topics, he applied for the deanship of the journalism school of the University of California at Berkeley. At that time, he had a year of radio experience although recognition in phytotherapy.

In 1998, David Horowitz and his Individual Rights Foundation filed suit against the Regents of the University of California, on behalf of Savage, when Orville Schell was named dean of the journalism school.[13] The suit alleged that Schell was selected through an "old-boy network of New Leftists, his appointment constituted political patronage and was therefore illegal under California labor law." [14]

References