Thursday, August 21, 2014

Another Icon of Right Wing Loony Tunes: Michael Savage

If one scans the landscape- web sites, Facebook entries etc.  of right wing idiots and loony tunes, one name sure to appear is that of Michael Savage. Just like Limbaugh, Hannity, Glenn Beck, O'Reilly and Larry Schweikart,  this tool seems to be one of the specially lionized imps by Tea Baggers (aka "constitutionalists"), radical conservatives and others who value anti-intellectualism over anything else.

According to Rational Wiki:

"An ultra-radical conservative, Savage, along with such others as Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter, has been a contributor to the ongoing demonization of liberal people and viewpoints, helping to maintain the current level of mutual fear and loathing in American politics. He is rabidly xenophobic, misogynistic and homophobic, and hates potheads with a burning passion"


As in the case of Larry Schweikart, this dope is a fake. So, all the huzzahs he gets from his boot lickers, groupies and sycophants are all for nothing- just empty banter. Most probably, his fawners and followers don't even know the history of this phony, including that he deliberately changed his original (Russian-Jewish) name  (Michael Alan Weiner) to "Michael Savage" - which was the "inspiration" for Savage Nation. Obviously, as psychologists will tell you, if you pick a psychotic name you will act the part of a psychotic. So it's no different with Savage.

Again, from Rational Wiki:

"Savage sews irrational, unfounded liberal-bashing with his life story. Explaining the thesis of the book (Savage Nation), he has said: "Only a more savage nation can survive...Not a more compassionate nation...We're not going to survive by being overly compassionate to our enemies."

But what about to our own people, like hungry children on food stamps, or moms and dads that have to work 20 hours a day and still can't make ends meet on minimum wage - so must go onto food stamps to have enough food? Evidently, Savage doesn't care to extend compassion to them either. How can he if he seeks to implement "savage Nation" and presumably have all his savage followers at his beck and command to do it?

The "nation" he espouses is one only for the fittest, so "survival of the fittest" would be its motto - after Herbert Spencer - who once famously dismissed any societal obligations to needy or disabled people that often begged at alms houses for services:

"If they are sufficiently complete to live, they do live, and it is well that they should live. If they are not sufficiently complete to live, they die, and it is best that they should die."

This, we can say, is the "philosophy" of the Savage-worshipping lackeys boiled to its essence. They'd let hungry kids on food stamps starve, let poor blacks continue to rot away in urban ghettoes and get shot every night under some ruse, even as they themselves blame others for their predicaments.

Rational Wiki for perspective again:

"Savage's style and views are so outspoken, vitriolic, and hyper-masculine that even the conservative pundit Bernard Goldberg included Savage in 110 People Who Are Screwing Up America. Media Research Center founder Brent Bozell has called Savage "crazy right" and has also said: "Michael Savage is to talk radio what Jerry Springer is to talk television"

So we can well imagine what his followers are like.

In a recent dustup  circulated on Youtube ("Michael Savage tears a liberal professor to pieces") Savage harangued a professor  trying to educate him on minority presence in riots in AZ.  Like Limbaugh - Savage saw fit to use bombast and epithets ("You're full of crap!") when the prof tried to reason with him.

Incredibly, Savage's delirious followers, instead of seeing the absence of reason and logic on their hero's side, chose to dump on the prof instead. And by extension any or all who had ever taught in academia as - get this " "lording it over their students" and "giving them Ds if they don't accept what they're told".
 
Cartoon concepts, anyone?  People like this obviously never attended college, were never exposed to critical thinking. Also,  when they go so far as to assert academics "never contributed a thing, a service, or product in their lives" they leave themselves open to ridicule and sharp rejoinder. . Hmmmm....how about imparting, or trying to, fact-based knowledge and critical thinking - which if YOU had a modicum of you wouldn't be slavering after every word of a crackpot like Savage?

Following their own logic to its end conclusion:  college is value-less to everyone, since all the profs are simply blathering nonsense and "on the dole". They aren't "doing" anything.  But if that has substance why are so many going to college, even with the high debt it entails? Perhaps they realize that doing so assures higher earning power and income at the end of the day - much higher than HS grads.

As for "products" and "services" - funny, but most of those I see all around me today - from smart phones (for "selfies) to Youtube and Twitter, are merely ramping up ever more time wasting and stupidity by the users.. I mean, how many times can you take your own selfie or show kitties punching doggies on video? Oh, and then dispatch tweets about them?  Such transitory nonsense evaporates compared with the value of hard-won knowledge which most of these yahoos wouldn't recognize if it bit them in the ass.

As for "giving Ds" - I seldom ever had occasion to do so myself, unless a student really did something dumb - say like turning in a lab or physics homework and writing on top: "I ought to get an 'A' just for turning it in!". Yeppers, and in red ink! Uh, no Buster, you get a big fat D- if it's incomplete or the data is copied from someone else.

Am I "lording it" over the little imp for giving him a D-minus? Of course not! Just trying to educate him at least in the basic sense that you don't dictate grades to your physics prof! But as we know, this sort of education breeds in the babies of the right the sense of victimization and being picked on. Who? By all those bad, nasty liberals of course!

Those 'libruls' who want to take their guns and bibles away, and teach their kids about global warming and evolution.

It's sad that so much internecine strife in this country today is based on perceived victimization and demonization. But with the likes of Limbaugh, Larry Schweikart and Savage around and people not adequately trained in critical thinking, what would you expect?


See also: Test - Are You A Racist?

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/jaime-oneill/57783/are-you-a-racist-take-this-simple-test

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