Friday, Sep 5, 2008
Infamous shock jock Michael Savage bombed in a bizarre, half-baked stage show this week, but his 6 million listeners just heard him call for the U.S. to murder millions of Arabs. Does the FCC care?
May 20, 2004 | Michael Savage doesn't get out much. The hardcore conservative radio host of "The Savage Nation" has always been a relatively reclusive figure. He doesn't do book tours or publicity stunts. He's not exactly approachable either: He claims to carry a gun with him at all times, and he doesn't like nosy journalists asking for interviews.
Not that he's the shy, retiring type. Lately, as the Iraq torture scandal has dominated the headlines, he has taken to calling Arabs "non-humans" and has called for the U.S. to kill "thousands" of Iraqi prisoners and nuke a random Arab capital. Deciding whether to pay attention to Savage has always been tricky, though. It's never clear whether he really believes what he says in his tirades or if they are simply ploys for public outcry. His is currently the third-most-popular radio program in the nation. Nonetheless, it may be hard for Savage to sit by and watch the FCC's crackdown against fellow jock Howard Stern effectively lift Stern's profile even higher into the stratosphere. But Savage's outbursts are often so unhinged, so vicious, that ignoring them seems irresponsible, especially when so many Americans apparently are nodding in agreement. So when I learned that Savage would be making his first public appearance in three years Saturday night, it seemed worth checking out, if only to see who was paying attention to him and why.
"Savage Uncensored," as the event was called, marked the end of what's been a crummy year for the once-hot Savage. Last March, MSNBC gave him a weekly program only to cancel it after four months when he labeled a caller a "sodomite" and told him to "get AIDS and die." Then the San Francisco radio station that gave him his first big break dumped him and rubbed salt into the wound with billboards that depicted Savage morphing into Sean Hannity, beneath the slogan "Out With the Old, In with the New." When a couple of anti-Savage Web sites started a boycott of his advertisers, his syndicator, Talk Radio Network, tried to revoke their domain names. When that failed, it tried to sue them for $1 million. That failed too.
Savage's star may have faded, but it's still too early to write him off, with "The Savage Nation" pulling in 6 million listeners a week. His latest screed against fifth columnists such as liberals, gays and atheists, "The Enemy Within," debuted at No. 8 on the New York Times nonfiction list. But when it comes to the true measure of a talker's cachet -- buzz -- Savage has slipped several notches in the past year. The anti-Savage sites are now dormant, their owners apparently satisfied that he would never make it back on TV. Fans and foes who once duked it out in Internet chat rooms appear to have moved on. These days, it seems the only people paying attention to Savage are diehard fans and perhaps a few incorrigible rubber-necking journalists.
Savage was scheduled to appear at the Concord Pavilion, an outdoor amphitheater in the suburban hills east of San Francisco. As a Metallica cover band called Creeping Death wailed, 5,000 or so people filed in to see him in the flesh. A quick look around made the demographics of the Savage Nation quickly apparent: Ninety percent were men and a good 95 percent were white. During the next three-and-a-half hours, there would be clear affirmation that they like gay jokes, Arab bashing and mass displays of patriotism. They will offer to share their freedom fries with a complete stranger. And when that stranger fails to boo liberals, holler the phrase "under God" during the Pledge of Allegiance or show sufficient enthusiasm for torturing Iraqis, they are polite enough not to drag him out to the parking lot and pummel him.
The crowd at Concord had paid as much as $100 for an evening of rhetorical red meat for the right-wing faithful. At first, we weren't disappointed. But by the end of the night, I wasn't the only one checking my watch.
Savage's son, Russ Weiner, kicked off the show. With his spiky, dyed-orange hair and calculated scruffiness, he was reminiscent of Dr. Evil's son Scott from the Austin Powers movies. The resemblance was confirmed when Weiner proclaimed, "I'm proud to be the son of Savage!" The 30-something Weiner is the founder of RockStar, an energy drink that he developed with his dad, drawing on Savage's previous career as a Marin County herbalist and ethnobotanist named Michael Weiner. RockStar's herbal liver-cleansing formula is supposed to enable drinkers to "party like a rock star," which presumably means drinking and doping. Generous free samples had been passed out to the crowd on the way in. It lived up to its hype: The antifreeze-colored, cough-syrup-flavored beverage can only be enjoyed if you're taking drugs.
But while Weiner has cashed in on other people's bad behavior, he made it clear that he's a family-values kind of guy. "Who's heterosexual and proud?" he asked, prompting manly cheers. "If you're not, hopefully you will be soon!" Before handing the stage over to the man he called "our leader," he advised the audience how to handle his hot-tempered dad: "Let him know you love him!"
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