MSNBC have finally had to sack Michael Savage for suggesting that a caller who he believed was gay should “get AIDS and die”.
During the Iraq war Savage was used as a pundit as part of a crude attempt by MSNBC to imitate Fox’s gung ho stance and cash in on their ratings success.
Firing savage is right, but wasn’t hiring someone with openly held fascist and racist ideas for a mainstream slot, on a channel that blanches at the idea of a shot of a nipple, clearly wrong in the first place. That Savage should go is obvious – but those responsible for hiring him at MSNBC should also go. Savage did not act out of character, and those who chose him knew what they had bought into.
Savage, like many people who are motivated by hatred, has a chip on his shoulder as a failed academic rejected by liberal Berkeley. I can’t help being reminded of a failed painter who turned his bitterness into resentment of the race of many of the successful painters around him.