Posted on 10/23/2006 5:23:18 AM PDT by livesbygrace
Consider the case of Michael Savage, right-wing radio guy, and the not trivial effect he could have on the upcoming election. What’s curious about him is the tantalizing possibility — now with a smoking gun — that his three-hour daily show is an act, a put-on.
According to Talkers magazine, he’s the country’s third-most-listened-to radio talk host, with 8.25 million listeners who frequently call in to hail him as a “great American.” As Publishers Weekly records, his first book, The Savage Nation (2003), sold 400,000 copies while its rabidly titled successors (The Enemy Within, Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder, and The Political Zoo) have all debuted on the New York Times bestseller list. His shtick is that he’s an “independent conservative.” The San Francisco-based commentator with the honking Bronx accent reviles President Bush, supposedly from conservative principles, in characteristic way-over-the-top fashion.
The other day he was blasting the administration’s conduct of the Iraq war: “We need Patton, but instead we’ve got patent leather shoes from Yale.” Savage mused that “some [conservatives] are saying it would be healthy for the Republicans to lose” the election. “I’m not sure I agree with that,” he allowed, but permitted his listeners to draw their own conclusions and vote (or not vote) accordingly.
Admittedly, for Savage this is mild stuff. More typical are his comments, always straining to shock, on Jimmy Carter (“like Hitler”), Democrats in general (“like Mengele”), Bill Clinton’s memoir My Life (should have been called “Mein Kampf”), Wolf Blitzer (“would have pushed Jewish children into the oven to stay alive one more day to entertain the Nazis”), and so on.
Of his own political identity, Savage says, “I’m a Goldwater conservative…. If [another] Goldwater appeared, I’d work for him, I’d give money to him.”
....which brings us to the smoking gun.
(Excerpt) Read more at article.nationalreview.com ...
And then there are his other favorites like "me" and "my" and "mine."
"I'm the only one...blah, blah, blah...."
He sounds like Elijah when he's trying to tell God that he's the only faithful one in all the earth who hasn't bowed a knee to Baal.
My tolerance for Weiner is about 5 minutes before I switch stations. I've long suspected his shtick was a put-on...
ping for this evening's thread
PING!
His radio show should come to you in a plain brown wrapper marked, "For entertainment purposes only".
I think he is a fake. Regardless, his show is unlistenable. A lot of ranting and no dissection of the actual issues of the day.
Savage is an embarrassment to conservative thought, a bully, and a phony.
lol~!
The sad thing for liberals is that NONE of their rants are sincere. They only behave to destroy the right, or to be seen doing so. They are purely and 100% reactionary. That is why you never see a serious program or policy suggestion from them when they criticize the right. They don't really have anything they want to do, but bash those who make them feel bad about their intellectual laziness.
So, if an occaisional pretender to conservatism appears and is somewhat successful at the business side of things, so what? As the posters point out, most are not fooled by this. That means Savage is being successful at the business, not at promulgating the substance of his ideas vs. tapping inot already held passions of others and making a buck on it. I don't approve at all, if true, but then he never appealed to me as anything but a self-promoter. He chases the wind.
Rush, on the other hand is a parody of self-promotion at the same time he has clear, succinct, novel, bright, deep thoughts to share with all of us. He is a brilliant commentator and he is working at his profession as a broadcaster.
In the end, it's about who can articulate reality best. That is the measure of a true conservative commentator. Actually, that is the measure of any good commentator. The problem is that the more real, the more conservative; the more unreal, the more liberal. Liberalism is the fantasy ideology, the cover-your-ears-and-hum school of "honest and open debate."
The Ivy League experience of the Minute Men proves that.
By the way, you should know that before Limbaugh was what he is now, he was "Jeff Christie" in an earlier gig in Pittsburgh.
The truth is that in the radio business it's not all that unusual for guys to use fake names.
I've heard him praised here on FR and have tried to listen but my ears just can't take the screeching rant.
In other words, it dawned on me that he is a somewhat clever FAKE, PHONEY, & a CON-MAN.
Michael Savage compared to conservative talk radio is like World Wrestling Federation compared to the NFL.
They attract the same crowd :)
I used to listen to Savage, but I never heard him mention Rockstar Energy Drink, and it sounds like a family business. I remember him talking about going to restaurants and drinking, but he made it sound like he was alone at these places. He never mentioned his wife.
http://www.rockstar69.com/
So he's like Mo Rocca, only he leans the other way. That's nice. I don't listen to him either. Everything political I need---and all the straight news too---I get at FR. I'll turn the radio and tv back on when FR has its own show.
He's no Goldwater conservative. During the dot-com boom he was on record as saying we needed an income cap, that dot-com entrepreneurs were making "too much money"-- more than "anybody needs."
That wasn't an act, either. The man's as authoritarian as Teddy K in his own way.
It should be interesting to see if and how he responds to this revelation of the Jerry Brown contributions...
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