I am absolutely terrified of this They-person that Savage, Coulter and company keep telling me about. They are pouring rat poison in my water. They are going to turn me gay or possibly into a secret Muslim sleeper cell. They hate America, red meat and my home base, the Midwest!
Gosh, They is scary. Good thing I'm fully warned about the dangers of They.
what i never understood about michael savage...and still don't...is how he has such vitriol against the gay community, yet he continues to live in san francisco. not that hating on gays is okay anywhere you live, but the guy has enough cash to live wherever he likes, and makes cash by spewing his opinion all over the place, so if you hate the gays so much, why are you still in san francisco?!
@rednrowdy: One of the weirdest and most interesting things about the article is it says Savage actually once worked in a clinic that served mainly gay men, and saw the beginnings of AIDS firsthand. He has this weird moment, which I didn't include in the post, where he sounds really compassionate toward this guy he knew who got AIDS . . . but then he started advocating for closing bathhouses, and now he is a total homophobe. I don't really understand his trajectory either, but seems like his relationship to SF and the gay community at least used to be a complex one.
@Anna N.: complex, indeed. he does talk about his early days as a liberal and sums them up to the tune of "i once was a child, but now i am a man". it seems he started swinging way right in the beginning of the 80's, but it seems like it would take a llot more than just the aids crisis to manufacture his current opinion.
Fun fact: Savage's son owns and runs the Rockstar energy drink company. And Savage's wife, until very recently held dual executive positions as the CFO at both Rockstar and Savage's production company. It was only after various LGBT groups found out about this and called for boycotts did the wife cut all ties to her husband's company, and Rockstar made a sizable donation to various LGBT groups and services.
@hovy: Rockstar has always held fairly progressive company values re. benefits for LGBT partners and such, it's not like they had a recent change of heart or somesuch. They talk some shit about Michael Savage in press releases.
Also fun fact - his real name is Michael Weiner. There is nothing savage about this man, he is a weiner.
And I think it was do us all good to never buy Rockstar Energy drinks.
@kathotdog: aw it is so sad and pathetic and transparent to choose the name "savage" to replace "weiner". he seems pretty tortured. if only he could be tortured in privacy without being rewarded with millions!
@kathotdog: Boycotting the son's company for what his father is doing seems unfair. Is there any evidence of the son having the same views as his father?
@sshacker: Well to me what makes it fishy is his wife's involvement in the company and the fact that both Savage Productions and Rockstar share a mailing address. I don't want my money benefitting M. Savage even indirectly.
@sshacker: Yup. It's much like the wink/nod/giggles that Lee Atwater did claiming, legalistically, that he had no direct involvement with the Willy Horton ads. Buying Rockstar is supporting the wiener lifestyle, for good or ill.
@greengrey thinks the layout sucks/swallows: He's not a Jew from New York (Jersey, I believe), but there was an article on Slate.com about how Jon Stewart should start using his real last name (Leibowitz).
@my cousin is an ape: Jon Stuart Lebowitz (although I prefer to call him Hottie Hottie Boombalattie) is from one town over from where I grew up, in Lawrence, NJ. (point of pride)
Mr. Savage reminds me so much of my dad, it's eery. And, like my father, he will most likely drop dead of a rage- and paranoia-induced heart attack in the near future.
It's sad, really. He clearly has a brain, but it got twisted somewhere. So much hate, fear and anger is incredibly unhealthy, and, honestly, how do you get to the point where wasting that much time stirring up hate seems like a good idea?
My partner recently discovered the colorful myriad of conspiracy theories that aging white men may hold. Nearly every day he'll come to me going "this guy online started rambling about "chem-trails", what are those?" He seems fascinated that anyone could believe this stuff.
He brought up a good point yesterday, though -- for all that many of these ultra-conservative shut-ins are foaming at the mouth over their "civil liberties" being stolen (and describing the injustice of paying income tax in terms of sexual assault! which makes me wonder how them have ever actually been assaulted!), most of them will turn around 2.5 seconds later and tell you that we should bar minorities/gays/women from basically having any rights to do anything ever.
@Zwitter: "Rights" are a conservative privilege in their eyes. In other words, for white males only. They 'justify' this by using the lame old argument about our founding fathers being white and male.
@Gretchen (Newly sprung from the medical slammer!): Exactly! As fun as it would be to create/participate in a political party that was in favor of giving Zwitter-and-friends all the money/rights/benefits in the world, there are obviously problems with an ideology that suggests that this is anything but hideously selfish.
It's amazing how the word "privelige" can sum up the many things wrong with Savage's views. Thanks for that.
@Zwitter: OMG, my mother recently started ranting about chem-trails. I told her to quit talking before she even started - I could tell it was mumbo-jumbo. So, now, what the hell is it really?
@crazy_lady: Near as I can understand, it has to do with believing that the exhaust contrails left behind in the sky by airplanes, are actually composed of some dangerous/psychoactive chemical with which the government is deliberately dosing its ignorant population. What those chemicals are supposed to DO to you is debated by the paranoid and otherwise schizoid.
@Gretchen (Newly sprung from the medical slammer!): If this be the case, then those so-called "tetanus" shots I got when I was little must have been meant to secretly render me immune to those pesky chemtrails ;) Probably the Zionist Elite helping out one of their own.
I made a joke to my partner yesterday about "lizardmen running the government" and he rolled off the bed laughing. I think he's old enough to learn about David Icke now.
@Zwitter: Ugh, I heard this same shit from a bunch of hippies I used to live with, except instead of chemtrails it was the alleged mind control properties of fluoride in the water. Shades of Dr. Strangelove with that crew.
@meritxell: Holy crap, my mother has ranted to me about avoiding fluoride treatments at the dentist. She's so wacky. Um, yeah. No worries, I'm up to date with all my dental work and vaccinations.
@crazy_lady: I ended up backing slowly out of the anti-war movement because I ran into too many people who believed these things. I'm all for radical politics but they have to at least be based in reality.
He also published the name and address of my lawyer neighbor after she defended an unpopular criminal such that she received death threats that would have made me go into hiding (she didn't). She's one of the bravest women I know personally.
I think he thinks too hard about being a bigot. He's, like, the over-educated, blowhard bigot. I'm with you Anna, if he's going to spew garbage, he may as well really commit.
@Sputnik_Sweetheart: If you've heard his show, it'd likely make more sense. His style of speech isn't the typical Limbaugh/Hannity mild outrage-with-occasional shouting tone - it's more akin to a full on manic episode.
There's probably an interesting story to be done on the affinity for punk/hardcore among right-wingers. I remember a Rolling Stone article about 8-10 years ago about white-power hardcore where several of the bands said that they were modeling their musical style and career trajectory on Fugazi (and yes, they were aware of the band's politics).
@thegogglesdonothing: Yeah I kind of... get it. I mean I don't associate punk with right wing politics AT ALL, but I can see how they'd relate to the anger and probably feeling "persecuted" for their beliefs.
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Gods, we can only hope.
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Gosh, They is scary. Good thing I'm fully warned about the dangers of They.
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I think Mr. Savage has me turning into one right now
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It's awfully nice of all the misogynists to refrain from having sex with us. OH WAIT.
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What about
"A man who hates men so much that he won't have sex with them" ?
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Well, that pretty much sums it up, doesn't it. Sad.
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Also fun fact - his real name is Michael Weiner. There is nothing savage about this man, he is a weiner.
And I think it was do us all good to never buy Rockstar Energy drinks.
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He's a fake American. Rutroh.
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It's sad, really. He clearly has a brain, but it got twisted somewhere. So much hate, fear and anger is incredibly unhealthy, and, honestly, how do you get to the point where wasting that much time stirring up hate seems like a good idea?
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He brought up a good point yesterday, though -- for all that many of these ultra-conservative shut-ins are foaming at the mouth over their "civil liberties" being stolen (and describing the injustice of paying income tax in terms of sexual assault! which makes me wonder how them have ever actually been assaulted!), most of them will turn around 2.5 seconds later and tell you that we should bar minorities/gays/women from basically having any rights to do anything ever.
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It's amazing how the word "privelige" can sum up the many things wrong with Savage's views. Thanks for that.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemtrails
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I made a joke to my partner yesterday about "lizardmen running the government" and he rolled off the bed laughing. I think he's old enough to learn about David Icke now.
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Ah, now I understand!
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That reminds me of a former classmate who was a Republican Dubya groupie who also LOVED Bad Religion. I guess neither listen to the lyrics much.
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There's probably an interesting story to be done on the affinity for punk/hardcore among right-wingers. I remember a Rolling Stone article about 8-10 years ago about white-power hardcore where several of the bands said that they were modeling their musical style and career trajectory on Fugazi (and yes, they were aware of the band's politics).
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