Michael Savage is the pseudonym of Michael Alan Weiner (pronounced Why-ner) (born March 31, 1942), who is a popular and controversial American right-wing talk radio host and political commentator. As Savage, he has written two books on politics: The Savage Nation (2003) and The Enemy Within (2004). As Weiner, he has written a number of books on herbal medicine and homeopathy. Most are currently out-of-print. [1] http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2003/02/06/DD1
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Contents

1 Biography 2 Radio 3 MSNBC 4 Politics 5 Writings 6 Quotes 7 Trivia 8 External links

Biography

Michael Alan Weiner was born to a Russian Jewish family [2] http://www.tampabaycoalition.com/files/720ManBehindSavageNation.htm in the borough of The Bronx in New York City. He received a Ph.D. in Nutrition and Epidemiology from U.C. Berkeley, and has a background in alternative medicine. He claims to have been a liberal at one time. Savage met his first wife, Carol Ely, in 1964, who had two abortions during their marriage. They divorced, and in 1967, Savage married again, and has two children with his current wife Janet.

Weiner was an associate of beat poet Allen Ginsberg, offering to arrange readings for Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1972. [3] http://50.lycos.com/031203.asp Some of his letters to Ginsberg are held in Ginsberg's archives. [4] http://www.radarmagazine.com/freshintelligence.html#

In 1996 he applied to be a dean at UC Berkeley's School of Journalism. When he was not granted an interview, due to lack of qualifications — less than two years of experience in radio, with a Ph.D. in epidemiology and nutrition science — Savage filed a discrimination lawsuit that was eventually dismissed. The position instead went to China scholar Orville Schell .

Radio

He began his radio career as Michael Savage on March 21, 1994 on KSFO in the Bay Area, debating a liberal show host. On January 1, 1995 he was given his own show during the drive-time hours. The show quickly became a local hit. In 1999, he came to the attention of the Talk Radio Network. On January 17, 2000 he started doing an additional two hours of radio which was broadcast nationally. For the next eight months, Savage would spend a total of five hours a day just talking. His national experiment was a success, and on September 21, 2000, he stopped doing separate shows, beginning a full three-hour national show. After just one year, he was in 150 markets. By 2003, he was in over 350 markets and is currently the number 3 radio host in the world.

In June 2003, he had a salary dispute with his flagship station KSFO who refused to renegotiate his contract. He was off the air for three weeks. On July 1, 2003 he began his show on a different station: KNEW in San Francisco. Since that dispute, he speaks badly of KSFO—and of "pretty boy", also known as Sean Hannity, whose show replaced his on the station.

MSNBC

He was hired by MSNBC to do a one-hour show starting March 8, 2003. On July 7, a mere five months later, he was fired for making anti-gay remarks in response to a caller — later identified as "East Coast Bob", a prank caller posing as a Censored page man — telling him that he "should get AIDS and die," as well as "choke on a sausage." Censored page group Censored page applauded the decision to fire him. Savage responded that he did not realize he was on the air when he made the comments and that he did not intend any offense to homosexuals but was merely angry at the caller, who had been, according to Savage, making "vicious personal attacks" on him (the caller had ridiculed Savage's teeth). He apologized for any "pain" his comments may have brought anyone. The show's ratings were extremely poor and many believe that MSNBC was simply looking for an excuse to cancel the program.

Politics

Savage claims to have coined the phrase "compassionate conservative" in 1994, though conservative scholar Marvin Olasky has also been credited with the idea. The slogan became a pillar of George W. Bush's election campaign in 2000. Savage, however, frequently accuses the national political parties of having identical philosophies and no real differences, and he uses the coined term Republicrat to refer to them.

Savage's radio program, The Savage Nation , often returns to the subject of closing U.S. borders to illegal immigrants as a way of solidifying American identity . He advocates stronger immigration controls and the reassertion of English as the official language of the United States. His mantra is "Borders, Language, and Culture". He believes that in order for the United States of America to survive as a nation, its citizens need to maintain the country's borders, have English as a uniting language, and promote traditional American culture.

His political opponents, however, accuse him of racism, homophobia and bigotry due to his controversial statements on Muslims, gays, feminists and immigrants.

Recently, Savage has been extremely critical of his fellow conservative talk show hosts, in particular Rush Limbaugh, whom he has called "Hush Bimbo", for what he views as their blind support of the Republican Party and President George W. Bush. He has also attacked Limbaugh and Bill O'Reilly, as well as William Bennett as hypocrites and phony conservatives for advocating morality while living what he views as immoral lives.

Writings

In 1980 Michael Weiner saw the publication of Weiner's Herbal: The Guide to Herb Medicine, which was seeking to gain approval for the theraputic use of marijuana [5] http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/949561/posts . He has authored a number of other books on various herbal medicine topics under this name.

In January 2003 Weiner published The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture his first book under the pseudonym Michael Savage. The book quickly reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list and Savage, as noted above, was given a commentary show on MSNBC. The book is extremely controversial for its position on the "liberal media," the dominating culture of "she-ocracy," Censored page, and liberals.

Critics have faulted Savage for making a number of assertions in the book that he often fails to substantiate with facts or resources. Exacerbating this condition is the fact that the book itself has no index. The book is divided into two- to four-page sections, many of which are near-exact replicas to columns he published on the conservative site NewsMax.com http://www.newsmax.com/ . In fact, much of the content of The Savage Nation can be traced directly.

In January 2004 Savage published The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military. This was his second political book.

Savage's political books are published by WND Books, a partnership between the conservative website WorldNetDaily and Thomas Nelson, a publisher of Christian books.

Quotes

On America:

• "[The U.S.] is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives." - San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 20, 2000.

On MSNBC which led to his firing:

• "Oh, you're one of the sodomites! You should only get AIDS and die, you pig! How's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig? You got nothing better than to put me down, you piece of garbage? You got nothing to do today? Go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Okay, got another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bath house and is angry at me today?" Bauder, David. "MSNBC fires Savage on anti-gay remarks." Associated Press: July 7, 2003.

On Liberals (whom Savage dysphemismally calls "Red Diaper Doper Babies"):

• "I certainly don't underestimate the Red Diaper Doper Baby, either. The Red Diaper Doper Baby- although pot-ed out, although deviant- is very, very smart with more power than you can imagine. They run every image in this country. Every image that comes out of Hollywood, Red Diaper Doper Baby driven. Every image that comes out of a New York newsroom, Red Diaper Doper Baby written. Every last one of them, Red Diaper Doper Baby, pull the switches on the images and the words that come out of Hollywood and New York. Don't for one minute think otherwise" - June 11, 2003. From his book, Savage Nation.

• "To fight only the al-Qaida scum is to miss the terrorist network operating within our own borders... Who are these traitors? Every rotten radical left-winger in this country, that's who." From his book, Savage Nation, January, 2003.

On Al Gore:

• "We are all sitting here asking ourselves, was there lead in Al Gore's silver spoon, because of the obvious tilt across the river of sanity. He has definitely pulled his raft across the river of sanity, or he has taken the side of the enemy, there's no other explanation for what he has been doing." - The Daily Savage, May 12, 2003.

On Women:

• "I'm beginning to think that women should be denied the vote. Their hormones rage; they are too emotional." San Jose Mercury News, November 6, 1998.

On Islamic terrorists:

• "I think these people [Al-Qaida, terrorists] need to be forcibly converted to Christianity ... It's the only thing that can probably turn them into human beings." - The Daily Savage, May 12, 2003.

On Minorities and Immigrants:

• "With the [Latino] population that has emerged, since they breed like rabbits, in many cases the whites will become a minority in their own nation... The white people don't breed as often for whatever reason. I guess many homosexuals are involved. That is also part of the grand plan, to push homosexuality to cut down on the white race" San Francisco Bay Guardian, September 9, 2000.

• "We need racist stereotypes right now of our enemy in order to encourage our warriors to kill the enemy." San Francisco Chronicle, February 6, 2003.

• "You open the door to them, and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control." The Oregonian, April 24, 2002.

On gays

• "Well there's a big difference between fighting for civil rights, and fighting for homosexual marriage, you moron. It's a big difference for fighting for the equality of all men, despite their race, and fighting for perversion, you idiot! You think people are stupid?" - June 10, 2004. - The Daily Savage, May 24, 2004.

• "But the question is what's good enough for you? You wanna live in a country like this? Where a gang of liberal judges hijack any law they don't like? And hold you hostage to it? They make homosexual wedding the law of the land, when 90% of the American people find it repugnant! And sickening! And disgusting! And don't wanna accept it! And don't wanna live in a degenerate nation!" - The Daily Savage, June 10, 2004.

• "Gays bore the hell out of me. They're the least important members of our society." - in his radio broadcast, September, 2000.

On torture in Iraq:

• "[T]ake their deepest fear, the pig, the dog, the woman with the leash, and use it on them to break them!" - The Daily Savage, June 10, 2004.

• "Use ... [l]ittle, ugly women. And let 'em take big strapping Iraqis and put 'em on leashes naked." - The Daily Savage, June 11, 2004.

• "Instead of putting joysticks, I would have liked to have seen dynamite put in their orifices." - The Daily Savage, June 11, 2004.

On Hillary Clinton:

• "Then you have Hillary Clinton, the most Godless woman in the Senate, right out of the Marxist playbook..." - The Daily Savage, June 19, 2004.

• "[Hillary Clinton, Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Sandra Day O'Connor have] "feminized and homosexualized much of America, to the point where the nation has become passive, receptive and masochistic." in his book, Savage Nation, January, 2003.

On the ACLU:

• "...these big-mouthed, phony scum of the ACLU, who should be rounded up, arrested for sedition. Their property seized, and they should be put into Abu Ghraib prison as far as I'm concerned. That wouldn't be enough of what I'd like to see done to the ACLU. They're the worst vermin America has ever tolerated. The worst vermin in the history of America are the vermin in the ACLU." - June 19, 2004

On the tsunami in the Indian Ocean:

• "Many of the countries and the areas in these countries that were hit by these tidal waves were hotbeds of radical Islam. Why should we be helping them destroy us? ... I truthfully don't believe in foreign aid. ... We shouldn't be spending a nickel on this, as far as I'm concerned. ... I don't want one nickel of my money going over there. ... I am sick of being bled to death by every damn incident on the earth." - December 31, 2004

Trivia

The opening theme to Savage's radio show is "Looks That Kill" by Mötley Crüe; it has also at times been "Du Hast" by Rammstein and "Master of Puppets" by Metallica. Interestingly, most of the bands who've been featured in the opening theme are politically opposed to Savage (being either socialist or liberal).

External links

• Michael Savage's website http://www.michaelsavage.com/
• The Savage Underground http://www.geocities.com/thesavagenation/savageunderground.html
• "Michael Savage's long, strange trip" http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2003/03/05/savage/index_np.html - Salon.com
• Savage: Arabs are "non-humans" and "racist, fascist bigots" http://mediamatters.org/items/200405140003 - Media Matters for America
• "Despite talk show host Michael Savage's astounding bigotry and anti-Semitism, the radio industry can't get enough of him" http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?aid=375 Southern Poverty Law Center
• "Savage Anti-Semitism: Radio host takes ethnic aim at Jewish enemies" http://www.fair.org/extra/0307/savage-anti-semitism.html - Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting
• Savage called a "Jew hater" by one who knew him http://www.tampabaycoalition.com/files/720ManBehindSavageNation.htm San Jose Mercury News
• Alternet: The Ignoble Savage http://www.alternet.org/story/16105/
• FAIR: GE, Microsoft Bring Bigotry to Life http://www.fair.org/activism/msnbc-savage.html
• San Francisco Bay Guardian: Savage Family Values http://www.sfbg.com/News/34/51/51dissb.html