Posted on 11/28/2005 5:03:33 PM PST by mastercylinder
Edited on 11/28/2005 5:07:49 PM PST by Admin Moderator. [history]
Al Franken and the other liberals are probably still wondering why they had such little luck in their efforts to start a talk-radio network to bash George Bush from the left. They didn't consider the obvious explanation. George Bush has his left flank nicely covered. It's on the right that he's weak.
That is the theory of Michael Savage. Savage is the most right-wing of the right-wing talkers on the national airwaves at the moment. He is based in San Francisco, but he can be heard in the New York area on WOR in the evenings. He is a welcome change from those Karl Rove clones Hush Bimbo and Sean Vanity.
"Hush Bimbo" and "Sean Vanity" are the names Savage has pinned on Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity of WABC. In doing so, he has sparked a war between the members of his "Savage Nation" (slogan: "Borders, language, culture") and the so-called "Bushbots," that sizable number of gullible Americans who can be convinced that whatever policy Bush adopts is a conservative policy.
"What makes Bush a conservative?" Savage asked when I got him on the phone the other day. "On the economy, Bush has got more governmental workers than anybody before him. He's ballooned the government."
As regards the so-called "war on terror," Savage points out that you can't win a war when you're afraid even to name the enemy.
"He's never mentioned Islamofascism," said Savage.
No, he hasn't. Even the French have been more willing to defend their borders, language and culture than Bush. He's a multiculturalist and a mushy one at that. Instead of reducing the reach of Islamic fundamentalism, Bush has managed in Iraq to get 1,700 Americans killed in a war that will create yet another Islamic republic. Just yesterday we learned that the new constitution in Iraq will incorporate sharia, Islamic law.
That's why we right-wing commentators believe the Iraq war has been the biggest blunder in America's military history. As for Bimbo and Vanity, if I may employ Savage's labels, they are simply too uneducated to realize that the Iraq war represents a failed liberal exercise in nation-building.
"There is no college in Rush. There is no college in Hannity," said Savage. "He's a high school dropout. It's like listening to an uneducated, unthinking man on the radio."
Savage has a Ph.D. from Berkeley in epidemiology, an extremely challenging field. That makes him a bit overqualified for the verbal pro-wrestling matches that make up talk radio. But it also makes him interesting.
The Bushbots don't think so. On their Web sites, they call Savage a bigot and a racist, two terms the employment of which generally indicate that the speaker is losing an argument. Savage is a hero on those Web sites that attack Bush's open-borders approach to immigration. "Rush Limbaugh is a direct link to his president, El Traitor, Senor Bush," wrote one blogger. "The invasion by illegals has been going on now for a long time."
"You are 100 percent correct," said another of Limbaugh and Hannity. "They are nothing but blind, rubber-stamping followers of El Presidente Bush."
All of this is a lot of fun if you don't take it seriously. I certainly don't. But I do find talk radio to be a good barometer of the nation's mood. And the nation is slowly figuring out that the Bush-neoconservative-Troskyite- internationalist view of foreign affairs has not worked out so swimmingly for the good old U.S. of A.
"Bush is melting down our borders and making us into a polyglot nation in which no one speaks the language," says Savage.
Savage hears a lot from people who say that any criticism of Bush is a mark of disloyalty to conservatism.
"I can't stand listening to people who want me to be a lapdog for Bush," he told me. "We're supposed to be watchdogs, not lapdogs."
As for the rest of the radio talkers, "They may as well work for the Republican Party. There's nothing interesting if you can predict what a man's going to say by just going to the GOP Web site."
He's certainly got that right. Listening to an endless rehash of Karl Rove's talking points, leavened by a few Teddy Kennedy-is-a-drunk jokes, is not very entertaining.
As for the Al Franken approach, how can a nation-building, internationalist multiculturalist get any traction by criticizing another nation-building, internationalist multiculturalist? John Kerry had that problem as well, you might have noticed.
When you attack the Bush-Rove spin from the right, however, you realize that the neocons' grand social experiment has been tried most visibly in Iraq and has failed most visibly there. People are starting to notice. Eventually even the Bushbots may get a clue.
I've heard him a few times. The guy is a cynical idiot who cares more about ratings derived from extreme views than his responsibility as a "personality" with a microphone whom others may actually believe just because he has a microphone.
So he's sorta like Phil Hendrie? If what you say is true - and I'm willing to consider it - I might give him a re-hearing.
I agree, and I said nothing of Savage himself, rather of his detractors.
"He does more damage for the conservative cause than good."
That he does us more harm says nothing of his rightness. Screaming on the radio is most alienating, I admit.
"And as a convservative Republican who was born overseas, speaks 4 languages, and has a multi-cultural background, his views offend and anger me."
I am sure that it's only miscommunication on both sides. He's a fair man with a good heart. What you fear is his shouting, not his ideas.
"He has a right to say what he wants. I have a right to turn the dial or pop in the Disney CD for my kids."
Point taken, though it's greatly ironic that your alternative is Disney, a vehicle which serves as one of many tools used for the Leftist indoctrination of our kids.
haha.....I agree with you.....though not sure if Rush is a genius, he has more common sense then most and knows how to influence without falling out of his chair in hysterics....and Sean....well, you are right....he says the same things over...and over...and over.....*yawn*....zzzz
I do, and so does savage. He clearly saw that the conservative side of talk radio was already claimed but that there was an unclaimed audience of "other" people out there. So he marketed himself to that other group.
Likes: His wicked sense of humor, his views on borders/language/culture, and his independence of thought.
Dislikes: His constant patting himself on the back about his superior "formal" education, his conspicuous envy/hatred of any political talk show host who has higher ratings (mostly Rush and Hannity), his occasional irrationality (he advocated nuking the Chicoms off the map after they forced down our recon plane. ....and he wasn't joking), his obsession with cuisine (sometimes he'll ignore politics and talk about nothing but food for hours at a time), and his rudeness to guests.
But he's absolutely right about the Elephants being virtually indistinguishable from the Donkeys in not a small number of ways these days. ....especially in their love affair with big gov't.
He thinks conducting the war the way it has been conducted so far is a losing bet.
Yes, he raves about how poorly it has been done. He's just flat wrong, and has nothing but hot air and hyperbole to back up his claims.
>Drink the Koolaid, bushbots.
Enjoy yours, Weinerbot.
Phil has numerous characters, I think. Savage really only has one.
If every radio host has an 'on air persona,' with a 1 being close to the real personality and a 10 being complete fiction, I would rate guys like Medved, Ingraham, and Prager a 2, guys like Hannity and Rush a 3 or 4, and a guy like Savage a 6 to 7.
Hendrie would be a 10 - it's a total put-on.
Just my guess. :-)
Dude, he plays the oldest cards in the book:
A)Give people someone or something to hate.
B)Provide seemingly common sense solutions to highly complex problems.
It's the lowest form of pandering. It's only a matter of time before some lunatic takes his cynical ravings seriously and someone gets hurt. Like the DJ in Fisher King.
Agreed. Savage is a joke. He's like Michael Moore, but at least Moore is occasionally funny.
Wow. You are unbearably condescending. I think you are Micheal Savage. Documented IQ? Documented where and what IQ test? What a ridiculous thing to pull out of ones butt, to prove a point. Why is it always the loud loser who screams that their IQ is superior to everyone else's in the room. Therefore, they win every argument.....even when they are so clearly wrong?
I didn't say his act was original! :-)
It is entertaining, though. And Savage doesn't call for violence or anything like that. He is a ham, and a character. I think most people who listen to him realize that.
I could be wrong, though.
And I will admit, I fell for Hendrie . . . more specifically, I fell for Ted Bell, who was complaining to Phil that his wife was mad at him because he took a cell phone call during an intimate moment, and she shouldn't be mad because "I'm a busy man and can't stop my business just because we're doing it!"
"At Te-e-ed's, we want to put our meat in your mouth!"
My hand to God, I was picking up the phone to call Hendrie and tell that jerk what I thought of him . . . and then Doug Dannger, gay man and gay journalist, came on, and something whispered to me to check it out online.
I was THIS close to making an ass out of myself on national radio. Ah, well, there's always time for that later.
yikes
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.