Michael Savage: Taking New Jersey By Storm
By Gordon Bishop (05/08/03)
He’s got the latest and hottest radio talk show, with tens of thousands of New Jersey listeners.
He’s got the hottest book in the nation – No. 1 on the New York Times best-sellers list in February.
He’s Michael Savage, author of The Savage Nation.
His real name is Michael Weiner. He’s 60 years old. He grew up in The Bronx, NY, attending P.S. 48.
He holds four degrees: a Bachelor’s from Queens College in education and sociology; two Master’s degrees in ethnobotany and anthropolgy from the University of Hawaii, and a PhD from the University of California at Berkely, the center of radical liberalism in America.
Why are so many radio fans from New Jersey and across the nation, now more than 6 million and counting, tuned in and turned on by the son of Russian Jewish immigrants?
In two short years in national syndication, Savage, with his strong Bronx accent, now ranks No. 4 as a national talk-show host, behind only Rush Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger and Sean Hannity.
In March, Savage’s caustic conservatism will be heard and seen on MSNBC cable-TV network.
Savage chose his last name after coming across the name of Charles Savage, an infamous legend in the Tonga Islands, where The Bronx’s Michael Weiner was exploring the Pacific islands in the 1960s. Michael Weiner adopted the right name for radio and celebrity: He’s now becoming a legend in conservatism.
Here’s why Savage attracts a growing audience, first on radio, and next on cable television. Some excerpts from his first best-seller:
• “Red-diaper doper babies” – RDDB. Savage’s explanation for modern leftists: “Red diaper baby” is a term used to describe children in the 1940s and ‘50s who were “steeped in communism, raised by commie parents.” Says Savage: “I tried to figure out what took an ordinary communist and turned him into this psychotic type of mad-dog leftist we have today. I believe that when you take the red-diaper baby, and realize he came of age in the ‘60s, and you put the drug into the mind of the red-diaper baby, presto, you have the RDDB, who is the current anti-American fanatic.”
• The “she-ocracy” has feminized and homosexualized much of America to the point where the nation has become passive, receptive and masochistic, Savage writes in his book. “We’ve all been warned about the dangers of a theocracy, where religious zealots rule. Today in America, we have a ‘she-ocracy’ where a minority of feminist zealots rule the culture.”
• “Private Ryan’s grandson” is Savage’s metaphor for American decline in the decades since World War II. The phrase is a play on the title of the popular Tom Hanks’ film “Saving Private Ryan,” and the “average GI Joe of that war. “Had Private Ryan not defeated Hitler, all of us would be speaking German or we would be a lampshade.” Savage says many young people today “haven’t been taught a shred of patriotism. That’s what they (the Private Ryans) died for? So their grandsons could become a drug-using sybarite, who won’t support his country in any way?
• “Daisy-chain immigration” is Savage’s term for the policies that have resulted in “massive and unfettered immigration. It’s a war by any means, and we’re losing it because we’re not evening fight it.” He blames both Democrats and Republicans. “Bush isn’t doing a damn thing about it, any more than the Democrats did. They want the votes and the cheap labor.”
Savage, who lives in the San Francisco area, describes urban America as a liberal “Porn Belt” surrounded by a conservative “Corn Belt.”
Savage contends conservatism “is the majority point of view among the people, (but) not among the media elite, who wish to project something different as the norm. I give peole the idea that they’re not alone. I’ve united them under the banner called the Savage Nation.”
I admire Michael Savage for taking a stand for America – the God Bless America I grew up to appreciate and to defend.
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