What a pathetic week it's been

For those of you who don't know who Michael Savage is... yay! Michael Savage is a conservative radio talk show host, but the really angry type. Anyway, people are complaining about him for some reason.

During a July 5 broadcast of "The Savage Nation," his nationally syndicated talk show, Savage said, "I would say let them fast till they starve to death ... because then we won't have a problem about giving them green cards because they're illegal aliens."

Some notes:

I, also, would let them fast till they starve to death. Or, to be more precise, I wouldn't take any responsibility for their decision not to eat. I think that my opinion is not particularly rare, either.

While I don't listen to him, my understanding is that this is fairly tame by his standards.

More than 30 protesters publicly denounced Savage and the on-air remarks outside San Jose City Hall on Thursday and said his comments should not be disregarded on the basis of constitutional free speech.

... Since when should any remarks be disregarded on the basis of constitutional free speech? Free speech wouldn't be much use if everyone disregarded it.

The group, which included San Jose State students who participated in the hunger strike and a variety of community activists, called on radio stations such as Clear Channel Radio's KNEW 910 AM in San Francisco to apologize for airing vile language and hate speech and cheered in support of the immigrant students who fasted.

Oh, that kind of "not disregard." (Note that the students who participated in the hunger strike are apparently cheering themselves.) I don't know... it seems that the standard of "vile language and hateful speech" would have to be quite low to include something like this, especially if we're talking about things that are supposed to be unacceptable to say.

Mark Silverman, an attorney with the Immigrant Legal Resource Center, said Savage's comments were as offensive as those of controversial radio host Don Imus, who was fired from CBS after making racist remarks about the Rutgers women's basketball team earlier this year.

"I think wishing the death of people is just beyond belief for someone who has access to 10 million listeners," said Silverman, a longtime immigrant rights advocate.

Wishing death upon hunger strikers is, again, quite common, because the context is that they're killing themselves. It's not advocating for the murder of folks. And there is, after all, a policy statement here, as compared to the "nappy-headed hos" comment. Is it "as offensive"? Who is allowed to wish death upon folks, by the way? Nobel Peace Prize winners?

posted by Beetle Aurora Drake 7/13/2007 03:26:00 PM #
Comments (6)

. . .

Comments:

Hello, I am new to your blog - a friend of mine showed it to me.

I think the quality of your analyses is very good as you seem to be very rational.

However, I do find your choice of targets a bit perplexing.

Your targets seem mostly to be these kinds of silly overzealous college activist types who don't seem to matter much anyway. I also live in a college town, but a pretty conservative one.

Do you read a lot of different types of news sources, but only find the need or inspiration to comment on these? If not Savage, do you listen to any other conservative pundits much?

Partially, what I am trying to get at is, Republicans in the country have most of the power, are able to have their way and get away with more, yet you use your skills decimating a marginal group of student activists. I don't quite understand why.

These ridiculous students bent on absurd or lost causes and hope will likely change their minds and mellow out after life hands them a few tough lessons, which it does to most people. Perhaps they seem like an awful nuisance if you live amongst them, but do they actually amount to much? Might it be that you cannot add any meaningful discourse to what you find fault in on the right?

Thank you

# posted by  Anonymous : 6:25 PM, July 13, 2007

 

It might be. I don't particularly care about contributing to "meaningful discourse." Nor do I care if they amount to much. If you're another dude coming to find my awesomely informed opinion on all matters of the world, you're another dude who's going to be disappointed. I'm not going to scour national news to find things to comment on, because there's plenty of folks out there who do it far better than I could. So I stick with the folks that surrounds me, so blame them for being so homogeneous.

By the way, this is one example of a target. I've also talked about the speech code folks who are far from marginal, and who show up every day to strip freedom from folks.

You'll also find that I don't typically deal with straightforward debates on either the right or the left. I try to focus on folks who say things that contradict themselves, or hide things. Typically, this is the newspaper reporting ("Oh, look at all the coverage on the burned kitten, which we'll write about as if we had nothing to do with it"), rather than the activists in question, but again, the speech code folks are an excellent example of folks who pretend to care about freedom and then take every action they can to decimate it.

I've found righties to have an extremely straightforward approach to most things, and there's usually nothing to say, even when I do disagree.

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 7:00 PM, July 13, 2007

 

Well I won't be entirely disappointed, I have enjoyed the entries I've read so far.

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:59 PM, July 13, 2007

 

Sometimes it feels like you use a few idiots to attack the validity of what they believe in.

But I agree that hunger strikes are really stupid, and only work if people already give a shit about you... like Gandhi.

# posted by  Anonymous : 10:08 PM, July 13, 2007

 

Again (or maybe the first time), if you feel compelled to find some real criticism, it's almost certainly directed towards the newspapers and their decisions about what is and is not news, and who has an opinion we should hear and talk about. For instance, when newspapers quote little kids at protests as if we should give a crap about their opinions, I pretend like we should give a crap about their opinions, and treat them like arguments to be discussed. This pissed off the other guy who seemed to have strange expectations for this site (example here)

# posted by  Beetle Aurora Drake : 12:11 AM, July 14, 2007

 

Do you recommend any of the "folks out there who do it far better than I could."? (I am not the last Anonymous writer, but I am the first. I will make an account later on.)

# posted by  Anonymous : 8:22 PM, July 14, 2007

 

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