Savage and Coulter: A Match Made in Hell

Do I really need to go here? There’s a part of me that wants to rant and rave about the unequivocal meanness, nastiness and vitriol that spew forth from these two monsters while another part of me wants to ignore them, for it is this kind of attention that they both feed upon like maggots to a corpse. The new millennial “queen of mean” and “champion of irrational thought”, Ann Coulter, who has gifted us with her absence in recent month’s is dangerously close to losing her title of “most hated conservative” to the new King of the Ignorant, Michael Savage, talk-show host non-extraordinaire. Her history of chastising 9/11 widows as “people enjoying their husbands' deaths so much” or the ineptly thought out, “..It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact.” make her not only a controversial magnet, but one who generates disdain from both the left AND the right. Savage, however, has made a good run…or a sprint even with his recent rant on autism and those afflicted by it which seems to have surpassed his bile-filled diatribe on AIDs and homosexuality, comments which got him fired from MSNBC five years ago.

The incident started when a caller to Michael Savage's July 5, 2003 MSNBC show, Savage Nation, apparently tried to get some kind of prank on the show. Savage responded with a homophobic tirade. Here's the transcript from the Nexis news media database:

SAVAGE: “So you're one of those sodomists. Are you a sodomite?”

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: “Yes, I am.”

SAVAGE: “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 have got nothing to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis.

OK, do we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today? Get me another one, put another sodomite on. No more calls out of--let's go to the next scene. I don't care about these bums. They mean nothing to me. They're all sausages.”

It didn’t take long before a majority of advertisers pulled out and he was subsequently fired immediately. He attempted to apologize on his also-popular radio program but it fell on deaf ears. You see, you can have a legitimate opinion about not being in support of homosexuality, if that is your belief…but when you resort to such baseline language you surrender your credibility badge. But that was then, in 2003. The war had just started. Polarization in America had begun many years earlier but just as the exponential eruption-like cost of a barrel of oil has divided a nation so has the rancorous verbal assaults taken a front seat to respectful debate. We thought it was bad then. Civility is virtually non-existent now.

And apparently Savage has decided that he will apologize no more. On the July 16, 2008 edition of his nationally syndicated radio show, Michael Savage raged about autism:

“Autism is a fraud, a racket. I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is. What do you mean they scream and they're silent? They don't have a father around to tell them, 'Don't act like a moron. You'll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don't sit there crying and screaming, idiot.' If I behaved like a fool, my father called me a fool. And he said to me, 'Don't behave like a fool.' The worst thing he said -- 'Don't behave like a fool. Don't be anybody's dummy. Don't sound like an idiot. Don't act like a girl. Don't cry.' That's what I was raised with. That's what you should raise your children with. Stop with the sensitivity training. You're turning your son into a girl, and you're turning your nation into a nation of losers and beaten men. That's why we have the politicians we have."
Savage also stated: "[W]hy was there an asthma epidemic amongst minority children? Because I'll tell you why: The children got extra welfare if they were disabled, and they got extra help in school. It was a money racket. Everyone went in and was told [fake cough], 'When the nurse looks at you, you go [fake cough], "I don't know, the dust got me." ' See, everyone had asthma from the minority community."

Don Imus, for all his faults, was off the air immediately. Savage remains employed. Despite the fact that one of his biggest advertisers, AFLAC, pulled out on him, there still remains enough disciples of his hatred who continue to listen and call, in support on his behalf, because they think he is right. Therefore enough advertisers remain to keep his mouth a'runnin'. If there’s still money to be made then you will remain on the air. Fact. That’s how corporate America works. It has no conscience. It’s not about what is right or wrong, it’s only about profit.

And the right says liberals are destroying America’s fabric. Everybody has a role. Anybody on the fringe who speaks with this sort of rhetoric, from either side, IS the problem. This is unconscionable. But that’s the America we have devolved into…one that we must reject and change.

It’s said that by giving these absurd comments attention it just gives them more power. I disagree. Cancer is still cancer no matter how many times you print it. By bringing to light the symptoms of an illness, one can often-times find ways to the cure. People like Michael Savage and Ann Coulter are indications of a social malady that we have a duty to purge. And the sooner the better.