« you can't teach old metal gods new tricks | Main | psa from rev. michele »

fear and loathing and michael savage

They say you better listen to the voice of reason, but they don't give you any choice 'cause they think that it's treason, so you had better do as you are told, you better listen to the radioThe radio was already tuned to WABC, the dial set there on my ride home from work where Sean Hannity usually keeps me entertained. So when I got in the car early last evening for a trip to the Dairy Barn (the only store I can go to wearing blue shorts, a green shirt and no bra), I was stunned by the squawking that came out of my radio. For a brief second, I was sure that my nightmares had come true and Crazy Eddie was back.

No, it was just Michael Savage.

I had never heard Savage before. I've made an effort to avoid him at all costs, knowing what I know about him. I long ago stopped listening to or reading things just for the perverse pleasure of making my blood pressure rise so I can then launch into an expletive filled tirade.

I slipped. I usually turn the radio back to FM, back to K-Rock (hey, it's all we have) before I turn the car off. I'd rather be unpleasantly suprised by some crap pop punk than by a gravelly, irritating voice presenting me with a warped view of the world. I don't know what happened yesterday that I forgot.

So there I was, mismatched clothes, braless, already frazzled from the usual events of the day when Michael Savage's voice attacked me.

He was going on about cultures. How, when people come to the U.S. from other countries, they should be told to leave their cultures at the door. For instance, Savage thinks that Muslim-American women should not be allowed to wear face coverings in America. Because, you know, there might be a terrorist man under that veil, pretending to be a woman.

While Savage himself doesn't frighten me - he is just one man - the fact that he has an audience does. There are people out there who think like him, who preach like him, who call him and praise him. It's a cult of hatred that exists only on the fringes of continually blurring political line in America.

What side the voice comes from doesn't matter. Whether it's Savage or Moore doesn't matter. What matters is the rapid speed at which the two screeching trains of hatred are headed towards each other. With each passenger either side gains, their volume is louder, their movements are swifter, their reach extends.

What happens when these two amped-up entities meet head on? Are we coming to that point where they will be the vocal majorities, where America will be nothing but a steel cage match between two cults of extremism and hatred?

When the most hanging-on-the-edge-of-an-extreme people are the only ones being given a huge forum, when they are the only ones to have their voices heard across the nation, do they smother the voices of the smaller groups who are striving for something better, something less acidic?

This is why Michael Savage scares me. Not because he is nothing but a ball of hate and ego; there are many just like him that don't get any attention paid to them. I fear him in the same way I fear Michael Moore, in that they are the conducters of two very disparate, speeding trains that are going to run those of us standing in the middle of the tracks down. And there will be nothing left but them.

TrackBack

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference fear and loathing and michael savage:

» foolish hobgoblins from Gut Rumbles
I lied last night. I am going to hold one more episode of Blog Survivor with a change in the [Read More]

» Thoughts on guys named Michael from Thinking Out Loud: Thought Leadership from an Enterprise Architect
Been reading various blogs on different guys named Michael (Jackson, Savage, Moore, etc) and figured that pretty much every blog I have come across hasn't figured out that there is a conspiracy to turn them into IT people in order... [Read More]

Comments

Not to mention the guy is a total egomaniac. At the station in Seattle that runs both Rush and Hannity, Savage tried to get one of the local hosts bumped out of his time slot. He was tired of being tape delayed here and wanted the guy who had been broadcasting in that drive time slot for close to 8 years' bumped or that station could air him. Thankfully, we kept our local guy and they told Savage buh bye.

I look at him like this. You have one on this side (Moore), you have to have one on the other (Savage). It's that whole balance in the universe crap that is still stuck in my head from colloege. While they both stink like the bottom of a rat cage, I seriously doubt if either of them have the power of starting a revolution. Both of them are close to reaching their peak, if they haven't already,

I agree entirely. I think we should make it a real cage match and just have Michael Moore and Michael Savage fight to the death. Something good would have to come of that. And maybe people would realize how insane they both are.

While taken to an extreme, I have to agree at least peripherally (without hearing what you heard) that the culture fusion idea doesn't work too well.

Instead of people coming here to be Americans many come here to be IN America. They avail themselves of our school system (hah!) and welfare systems and exploit the zero-interest small busines loans that I, a natural born American, will never get.

Retaining your own culture inside another country is not healthy. Having your young kids unable to speak English in American schools puts a drain on their already limited resources and slows down the education process even more.

Having a kid pitch a fit about the Pledge of Alegiance, some random AMERICAN holiday and then DEMANDING that we accomodate their culture is assinine.

This is AMERICA. Its not Britain/France/Germany/India/Cambodia/Vietnam/China/Italy-land.

We DO have our own distinct culture, being AMERICAN. If people aspire to come here its not just to practice Islam while getting a free American education and welfare assistance, they want to BE Americans (I would hope). So why is it so wrong to want them to BE American with a BACKGROUND in whatever culture they came FROM?

Having to print government (welfare) documents in 14 different languages costs ME more money than it should. What's next? Multicultural road signs on the federal highways? Celebrating EVERY SINGLE holiday because someone somewhere is some nationality other than American?

Get real.

Multiculturalism is killing "America".

Arrgghhh, that is supposed to be "couldn't air his show".

I read his book back in January after I saw him on Hannity & Colmes. If anything, he's entertaining in the sense that he has some crazy ideas that many people relate to in one way or another (i.e. patriotism and how unpopular it is to consider yourself patriotic nowadays).

I've only heard his radio show once, and he was going on about Ashley Banfield wearing a tank-top to report on MSNBC.

He and Michael Moore are just pissed off type-A personalities who like to hear themselves talk. People driving home from work tune in because they like what he has to say.

Let's see...Moore lies, makes up material, is rewarded by society (Academy Award) versus Savage, derided by mass media, wannabe pundits, real pundits, etc. One hates America and Bush..the other, the opposite. Gee, yeah, Savage is evil. Right. We've got our borders flooded with illegals and that's Savage's primary problem....they come here, hate us and publicly declare they won't be happy til we have Sha'ria. We have illegal immigrants....by law in my state...receiving free tuition at public institutions, free health care, front-of-the-line welfare benefits, food stamps...all on my taxpayer dollars. But he's morally equivalent to Moore...well, to you. Not to the rest of us. Is he extreme....maybe in the parallel universe you inhabit.

Whoa, Hashim. Calm down man. I don't know what state you're in, but is not a calm one. Yeah, there is a problem with illegals, but isolationism isn't the best answer. Yeah, there is a problem with them getting all the benefits they get for free that we all pay for, but until people stop just sitting behind an icon like Savage and yelling "you tell 'em man", nothing is going to happen. So get off your ass. If you already have, congradulations.

Here in Seattle we had an illegal hold a press conference about her upcoming sexual harrasment case against krispy kreme and no one from INS showed up to take ker to jail. That pissed me off ot the point where you are now. But guess what, the government is lazy because it is too fat. And it likes it that way. Until you start to make it feel embarrassed of its size, it'll stay that way.

Least prepared talk-show host in the business.

I turned Savage on the other day; there was nothing else on, and I like to see how long he can go without falling back on that mocking effeminate sneer he loves to deploy. He was doing a bit about respecting the culture of cannibals. An interminable bit. A one-paragraph blog entry blown up to 5,000 words. It got progressively less amusing, and finally he ended with the hysterical lisping voice of an ACLU lawyer. And then, his boffo conclusion:

"I'm just having fun. Theater of the mind. If you don't like it you can go to hell. I don't live in your country. You live in my country."

What a charmer.

If you think of Savage as performance art comedy - a perfectly normal human being playing the character of a slobbering jackass - then he'll have you in tears. Too bad he's for real; he could be the next Kaufman.

And now, back to work. Everything tastes like paint this week.

I recently considered going to see bowling for columbine as it was at the dollar theaters. I didn't for the same reason I don't listen to Michael Savage. Neither will sway me to their extreme opinion, they may piss me off but I can deal with that. Why didn't I go to B4C? It would have been 2 hours of my life lost, I don't listen to MS for the same reason, I have better things to do with my life, like deleting spam offering me bigger breasts and such...

Savage spews a lot of crap, and then he tempers it (sometimes halfassedly, sometimes with more conviction) by adding almost-PC qualifiers. The example of him saying that he "thinks that Muslim-American women should not be allowed to wear face coverings in America" is an example of some crazy crap that he would say, but then I can imagine him adding, afterwards, "what I mean is that they shouldn't be allowed to wear them in instances where other people can't cover their faces." Maybe he didn't add that in this case, I dunno.

In any event, I don't see Michael Savage as the right's answer to Michael Moore. Savage, though inconsistent, seems more consistent than Moore, who in one breath will say that the Pope is a craphead and then say that "but even the Pope is against this war!" in the next.

I have Savage's book, and I have Moore's book. Reading one of them makes me want to put my finger down my throat, and reading the other makes me shake my head in wonder. Whenever I happen to catch Savage on the radio, I'll be nodding my head in agreement repeatedly until he finally says something that stops making sense. I'm like "yeah... yeah... good point... ah, true... yeah... excellent point... what?!?"

For Michael Moore to be the left-mirror-image of Michael Savage, he'd have to have some kind of a coherent point.

I do have a bone to pick about the Islamic chic who wants to have her driver's license picture taken in her veil, and is suing for the right to do so. Come on, the damn thing exists so that you can point to it and go, "See, that's me!" If your face is mostly obscured by a veil how is anyone supposed to know its you?

Just my two centavos. Go figure.

I'm with you on that Michael. That's a whole other story.

A veil worn for a driver license photo? Come on! The whole purpose of a photo id is to id the person. Don't drive if you have a problem with not wearing a veil. What are they going to wear when driving? Can't exactly see with those things on.

Not meaning to be inflammatory here (but in the long run it doesn't really matter), but wasn't the whole point of America in the first place to be a refuge for those who didn't want to be persecuted for who they were, and for what they believed in?

Didn't the pioneers (foreigners, remember, Tim) turn up on the mainland in order that they wouldn't have to compromise their core values to appease a draconian society?

Wasn't the constitution created to protect freedom of speech, belief and character?

Isn't the American Dream based on the belief that one can succeed, no matter what their origins, if only they were willing to stand up and work for their rewards?

Isn't that why all those ancestors arrived in the first place?

Although I agree that there's little point in constantly struggling against a country that you hate, I suspect that it's these core American values that the same people are attracted to.

Sure, abuses occur, but immigrants are an easy target if people are looking for someone to blame. After all, its far more easy to convince ourselves that we're victims than to recognise that life is hard and cruel, and that we're not necessarily ENTITLED all we want, no matter how hard we may have worked for it.

Some people need to focus on others less.

"The question you need to ask yourself is this...What have I done to make my life better?" (American History X)

As a footnote, I'd like to apologise to Tim, whose comment I misinterpreted the first time I read it.

Still, my point stands. And I'm bored of partisan politics. People are people. Love them or hate them, whatever you want. But in the main, morality and ethics are generally employed primarily for self-justification.

Fear and loathing? It all comes around eventually...

I listen to and enjoy quite a few of the talk guys on WABC in New York. I simply cannot stand Savage though. I have tried a couple of times but his show is abrasive and seems to always be the same story. I thought it was just me.

Blue shorts and green shirt? I'm sure the kid at Dairy Barn didn't need to see that either. NOW, about the no bra...

OH, I'm sorry the story was about something on the radio?

You're such a dick. Stop being so incestuous.

Off the Savage topic for an instant(my own NY radio enjoyment peaked in the great days when WNEW FM, Scott Muni at the helm and PLJ were in hot competition, the Crazy Eddie era), Analog Kid's comment kinda sorta struck home.
A few years ago, when I lived in Nevada, I was a security supervisor in a casino. We arrested a Southeast Asian noncitizen in the act of making off with a little old lady's winnings. About two months later, we caught him again, this time with another little old lady's money. Both arrests, due to the amounts of money involved, were felonies. After the second one, I called the local Immigration folks and asked, "This guy's not working and he's now been convicted once for and busted a second time for grand larceny. He's here on some visa or other, not a diplomatic one, so why hasn't he been deported or something?"
Their reply?
"We're too busy. We only take action against those who commit VIOLENT felonies."
Welcome to America, where you can get away with all sorts of things they won't stand for in the old country.
Sheesh!