Ignoble Savage: MSNBC's latest bid for ratings may backfire.
One Wonders what Tom Brokaw and NBC Newsnot to mention some of the suits up at parent company GEthink about getting in bed with a guy who rails against "the degenerates on the left who want to sell Americans on the idea that homosexuality, bisexuality, transsexuality, even sex with animals is normal" and thinks that America "is being taken over by the freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives."
Those are the words of Michael Savageright-wing San Francisco talk-radio assassin and author of the New York Times number-one bestseller The Savage Nationwho will soon begin his own show on MSNBC. I connect him so closely to Brokaw and NBC because NBC recently announced that it was rebranding MSNBC, making the ties between the two news networks closer. (NBC News publicist, Barbara Levin, offered a "no comment" when I inquired about what Brokaw thinks of Savages controversial arrival.) The same desperation that led to that movetrying to make the cable news channel even remotely competitive with number-one Fox Newsled MSNBC to give Savage his own Saturday afternoon show.
Savage makes Foxs Bill OReilly, to quote Cathy Renna at the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, "look like the next grand marshal of the Gay Pride parade." Renna believes Savage is such far-right gutter trash that even Foxs Roger Ailes would have passed on him. That may or may not be true, but Savage does cast Sean Hannity as a moderate, spewing the kind of hate-filled rants that sound, literally, like white supremacist screeds.
"You open the door to them," he has said about immigrants, for example, "and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control."
Theres lots more where that came from.
MSNBC fired Phil Donohue last weekthough his ratings were higher than Chris Matthewsand hired Savage as well as former right-wing Republican House members Joe Scarborough and Dick Armey. You may recall that Armey had a supposed slip of the tongue and called openly gay Congressman Barney Frank "Barney Fag." (I cant wait to hear the slips of the tongue he has on live television.)
When GLAAD complained to MSNBC last week, they were urged by media relations guy Alan Winnikoff to "watch the show," and then told that the network couldnt be "associated with" comments Savage had previously madeas if the execs just pick people up off of the street without studying their previous work. Of course, someone knew full well what this guy was all about and thought hed make good television, believing that right is the only way to go if you want to compete with Fox.
For GLAAD, this was a Dr. Laura redux. The group had been part of the campaign against Laura Schlessinger three years ago, a campaign that took off dramatically after activists founded StopDrLaura.com, a website group that targeted Schlessingers radio and television advertisers as well as Paramount Television (which was producing her tv show) and CBS (which was airing it). As with the recently launched boycott against Rush Limbaughs advertisers, the anti-Schlessinger campaign was successful in debilitating Schlessinger, with many advertisers dropping her.
Savage no doubt knows all this. Last week he belted out a nutty diatribe, threatening GLAAD and, from what Ive been told, making a lot of people at NBC nervous.
"You rats!" he screamed. "You stinking rats who hide in the sewers! You think you can go after my income? You think you can kill my advertisers? You think Im Dr. Laura? You think Im gonna roll over like a pussy? If you continue this, were going to go after your funding sources. And we will do everything we can within the legal realm to cut off that funding! We are also going to go to the U.S. Justice Department under John Ashcroft! What you are doing is illegal! You think its 1965 and Im South Africa? Ive got news for you: Its not 1965 and it aint South Africa!!"
Later, Savage added: "I have millions of people who vote. Mr. Bush wants to get re-elected, and just consider me a politician at that point. Im going to ask for a trade in favor. If they keep it up, my favor is going to be I want these groups investigated. If theyre doing nothing illegal, fine. If theyve crossed the line, then put em out of business."
So, we now have a talk show host who says hes got access to the president, and is going to call in a "favor" in return for delivering votes. More than that, he claims hes going to get the scarier-than-scary John Ashcroft to investigate his critics. He may or may not be a total crank, but at least Rush Limbaugh makes believe hes not working with the administration.
GLAAD argues that Savage is more of a threat than Schlessinger, since hes part of the news division at a major network, while she was a product of Paramount, put on CBS through the entertainment division. On the record, MSNBC is standing by Savage, sending out only a statement: "The addition of Michael Savage to the MSNBC line-up was made with the full awareness of his reputation for controversy and confrontation. We respect the right of those who wish to protest. However, we also strongly defend his new show as a legitimate attempt to expand the marketplace of ideas."
But a source at NBC says that the people in corporate are skittish, and have been freaking out all week, not having realized what he was about. Groups of gays, Hispanics, African-Americans and others at the network, meanwhile, are organizing with activists on the outside, going directly to CEO Robert Wright. Some of them believe they have a good shot of getting Savages show killed before it even gets on the air.
"There is a code of conduct that all talk show hosts have to follow," someone else at NBC told me, and apparently Savage may have already broken it. Whether MSNBC dumps him or grins and bears ithoping for those big ratingsremains to be seen. But its clear that MSNBCs desperation has brought it down into the mud, and its only going to sink deeper.
Michelangelo Signorile can be reached at [www.signorile.com](http://www.signorile.com).