Thursday, September 10, 2009

Michael Savage’s flagship station drops him.

Finally San Francisco gets the respect it deserves from Clear Channel Communications and it's local affiliate, KNEW 910AM, by taking off-the-air, the mos vitriolic and bitter Shock Jock of them all, Michael Savage, who has for years stained with his mere presence this most beautiful and accepting City.

A thank you letter to KNEW 910AM would be in order but.... check out the guys who are replacing him - on the bright side, albeit the 'whiner' is what you find at the bottom of the 'human scum' of the homo sapiens denominator's trash barrel, KNEW / Clear Channel are giving us 'something new of the same thing', so if a letter is sent, it would be good to point our that they get a minus zero in attempting diversity.

How vitriolic and bitter The Savage has been?
Let us count the ways


FROM: Think Progress

Michael Savage’s flagship station drops him.

savage1

Earlier today, the conservative blog Patriot Axom noted that far-right radio host Michael Savage has been taken “off the air” from his San Francisco-based flagship station, Talk 910 KNEW. Now, a representative from the station has issued a statement explaining why it will no longer air Savage’s show:

I’m going to answer the very first question many of you have.

“Why did you take Michael Savage off the air?”

Here’s your no-spin direct answer; we have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information. The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision.

910 KNEW’s decision is the latest blow to Savage’s efforts to spread hate. Last winter, following a campaign by the Council On American-Islamic Relations and Brave New Films, numerous advertisers ended their relationship with Savage, including Geico, Union Bank of California, and ITT Technical Institute. Savage has in the past advocated killing 100 million Muslims, compared President Jimmy Carter to Hitler, and has said that the U.S. Senate is “more histrionic than ever” because of the addition of female senators.

FROM: Media Matters for America

Michael Savage gets bounced off the air in his own hometown

September 10, 2009 4:37 pm ET by Eric Boehlert

In fact, KNEW in San Francisco serves as Savage's flagship station for his syndicated radio show. Make that was. As Think Progress reported, the station yanked Savage off the air today. Permanently.

The station's statement:

We have decided to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction, featuring more contemporary content and more local information. The Savage Nation does not fit into that vision.

I'm sure The New Yorker is crushed.

The New Yorker raises a toast to birther nut Michael Savage

August 03, 2009 3:59 pm ET

If you've been under the impression that right-wing radio host Michael Savage, who claims Barack Obama was born in Kenya, was schooled at a radical Islamic madrassa, and is now "raping America," was a hate merchant who operated on the edges of common decency, and represented a primetime player in the unfolding far-right campaign to delegitimize and dehumanize the president, The New Yorker wants you put those assumptions aside.

If you thought that Savage was cultivating a culture of extremism by claiming the Obama administration espouses "the same exact policies as the Nazi Party," The New Yorker thinks you have it all wrong.

And if you bought into the silly notion that Savage was part of a right-wing movement playing off racial fears, The New Yorker thinks you're being simplistic and naïve.

Because in its August 3 issue, the mighty New Yorker magazine, in an in-depth profile of Savage (subscription required), mostly set aside the host's nasty streak and suggested instead that the paranoid, gay-hating, xenophobic talk show host was really just misunderstood.

In truth, or at least in the gentle hands of New Yorker writer Kelefa Sanneh, Savage is "a marvelous storyteller, a quirky talker, and an incorrigible free-associater." He hosts "the most addictive program on radio and one of the least predictable." To Sanneh's ear, Savage's daily rants by the jazz-loving host are "engrossing."

In other words, he's an artist weaving a broadcast tapestry.

Savage doesn't preach hate. (That's so cliché, people.) Instead, the host merely engages in some old-fashioned "rabble rousing." Sure, he broadcasts an "antipathy for liberals." And yes, he does show flashes of an "immoderate" and "incendiary style." But deep down, Savage is really just a throwback to "garrulous old-school New York radio personalities." In fact, Savage isn't all that much different than famed shock jock Howard Stern. Besides, The New Yorker loves the "counter-culture feel" of Savage's program.

Plus, once you get to know Savage and hang out with him on his deck at his Bay Area home and share a beer, you discover he's "a first-rate host, chatty and solicitous." And who knew that Savage "loves to talk about his well-worn Hebrew Bible, which is full of annotations and post-it notes"? Indeed, Savage is a man in search of "the right way to articulate his Jewish heritage."

What's the big deal, Sanneh seems to be asking throughout the article. And in an audio interview posted online at The New Yorker website, the writer seemed bemused that when it came to the topic of Savage, "liberals get all worked up about, 'Oh, this guy is really offensive and vile and hateful.' "

Personally, Sanneh just didn't see it. "I think a lot of people who don't listen to his show would maybe be surprised by how weird it is and how funny it is," he told his online interviewer. Indeed, according to the writer, "part of the fun of listening to his show" is the way Savage "wrestles on the air" with life's bigger, philosophical questions.

And, oh yeah, Savage is actually a "political idealist, a sucker for a sob story, and firm believer in the power of friendship."

Question: Does he like puppies, too?

Honestly, The New Yorker could not have picked a worse time to publish a puff piece about Savage. Arriving on newsstands the same week we learned that 58 percent of Republicans either don't believe or don't know whether Barack Obama was born in America (a rancid conspiracy theory that Savage has peddled for months), and arriving the same week that Fox News' Glenn Beck went on national television and called out the president of the United States a "racist" with a "deep-seated hatred for white people," The New Yorker's soft-pedaling of Savage, as well as the larger unhinged right-wing movement to demonize and dehumanize Obama, was just embarrassing. (By the way, in the same article, The New Yorker described Beck as "deftly channeling the defiance and bewilderment of dissident America." I suppose that's one -- softball -- way of putting it.)

Sorry, but in case The New Yorker hadn't noticed from its lofty, literary perch, there's a not-very-subtle movement within the right-wing media to paint Obama as illegitimate (i.e., the Manchurian Candidate) and as a looming threat to our liberties and freedoms. There's also a burgeoning race-baiting movement afoot. And Savage is helping to lead that charge.

According to Savage, Obama is "surrounded by terrorists" for friends and is "raping America." He's a "neo-Marxist fascist dictator in the making" with a plan to "force children into a paramilitary domestic army." Savage has also attacked gays as people who are "raping our children's minds." He has condemned illegal immigrants for having "destroyed" California and accused them of having "raped and disheveled" the Statue of Liberty.

In terms of Islam, just listen to this in order to get a taste of Savage's disturbing, guttural hatred for the religion and its people: More...



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