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 too have to agree
Which is why savage had to appeal to someone other then conversatives...that nitch was already taken.
And he's consistently one of the most ignorant men on the radio.
Did anyone hear him say about 25 times or so today that Ramsey Clark was in Jimmy Carter's administration?
Wrongo, Mikey. It was Johnson, not that you'd know, or care, or acknowledge your mistake. You never do.
I agree. Bush squandered 2005. I don't have an explanation for it. I'm hoping that today's speech and the speeches of the last few weeks signal that he's coming out of his fugue and will start being the President.
These morons, these cretins, these cynical, pathological, amoral a-holes have turned political debate in this country into something resembling professional wrestling. We have guys like Savage on one side and a former Saturday Night Live writer on the other. They've taken the debated and distorted the facts and issues so that all you can hear anymore is the distortions.
I agree and expect Bush to rebound in 2006. No reason he can't.
Yet another lie from Savage, unless it's UC Berkeley that's lying.
They say his degree is in "Ethno Botany" through the Department of Anthropology.
That must have seemed real cool back there in the 60's, but it's a little to hippy-dippy now. Sort of like nameing your kid Goldencloud.
No joke, we were on the same wavelength - I just wrote a short essay on my lifelong love of pro wrestling on this thread, and it was being written while you were writing your post to me.
That's why I consider Savage a 'work,' as wrestlers would say.
And yes, you are correct.
Gad-bleepin-zooks,
Finally someone who sees what's up with all this banter...thanks for the well stated comment....
Is that all? LOL!
Red makes green. Savage apparently learned that from the squared circle.
Yep. That's a great slogan, too. When it comes to wrestling, I am OLDSCHOOL! ;-)
And to be fair, "if it bleeds, it leads' is a longtime slogan from the journalism business! :-)
I'm sure he did extensive studies on the medicinal property of certain hemp plants.
Savage, the Right's Howard Dean
mic'ed Milk Bones under the mat...single edge razor blades between the fingers...
Talk to the typical guy in a bar and he actually believes Al Gore said he invented the internet. Ask him where the internet may have actually come from and he'll say, "AT&T?"
Talk to the liberal and he'll tell you about how the President is now staggering around the White House drunk and abusing drugs because he's seen pictures on DU.
This stuff is no good. It's political dysfunction.
Bump!
No argument from me, bub.
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