Michael Savage

So. How 'bout that screed on the air.* Nothing much to be said, I think. He's a red-meat wingnut type, doing what red-meat wingnuts do. I hate him in general b/c he's of the apostate David Horowitz school of former lefties--apikoros.

Also, it's just such a stupid predictable line of attack: it's over-diagnosed, it's bad parenting, it needs to be corrected by a good smack or some verbal abuse (ahem, straight talk). Gee, there's a nuanced analysis. In short, exactly the train of associations that a judgmental asshat on line at the grocery store would generate while a child is tantrumming.


I'm fairly absolute in terms of the First Amendment. He has a right to be as fucking ignorant as he wants, though the station also has the right to decide hey, he's not worth the threat to our bottom line by alienating viewers.

Or maybe I'm just jaded and have such a low opinion of right-wing talk radio discourse that I'm thinking this is less important than it is. I dunno: he does have a scarily large listenership, and while he might be preaching to the choir, he might be coarsening a few newbie altos just tuning in.

*For those who don't live inside my brain, or who don't automatically snap to attention when the word "autism" shows up in a news article, Mr. Savage said that autism is over-diagnosed "99 percent of the time" and most of the kids dx with autism are out of control brats who need to be told what's what. He's currently trying to shield himself by excluding kids with classical autism from his contempt. It's only the verbal ones who are less visibly disabled that he takes aim at.