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Michael (Weiner) Savage is all about entertainment

Thursday, March 06 2003
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Views: 501
EntertainmentYou are white, male, and old enough to vote but probably too young to have been forced into combat. You are most likely somewhere west of New Jersey but east of California. You may well be driving a pick-up truck while imagining it is one of those tank-like things known as Hummers. You are not very well-educated and certainly not well-travelled. You don't harbour doubts. You are the target audience for American talk radio. This fellow makes a compelling argument that talk radio is dominated by right-wingers (and that the audience for right-wing talk radio is not too bright.) He's right.

I'm not entirely sure he's right about TV, though. I mean, if we had right wing folks running TV, would Will & Grace be on (for example)?

Most importantly, I thought I'd point out that I occasionally listen to "Savage Nation" as a form of entertainment. Oh, not the actual content, but the host's method of delivery. He's a consummate entertainer who knows his audience well. "I'm sorry. That's just my opinion," he opines after making statements of (possibly true, possibly untrue) fact. Ad hominem? That's his bread & butter, flinging adolescent nicknames toward political figures he dislikes. Is Michael Savage that stupid? No. Of course not. He just knows that his fans are.

And no, I don't think Al Franken's liberal talk show station will make it. The very core of liberalism involves questioning beliefs, engaging in dialog. But the essence of the talk show format is groupthink, dittohead, follow-the-leader, insecure "host" worship.

(And NPR in our area has started to stink, ever since things turned anti-Israel...)
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Michael (Weiner) Savage is all about entertainment | 10 comments | Create New Account
The following comments are owned by whomever posted them. This site is not responsible for what they say.
I guess I\'m not too bright ...
Authored by: norcalfella on Thursday, March 06 2003

... because I sometimes listen to the talk radio shows this Engel bloke is referring to and I could not disagree more with his assessment (or your agreement for that matter).

How about if I say that everyone who watches the Oprah Winfrey show is dumb, black or a lazy housewife? That\'d be about the same as this moron (or you, by agreeing with him) saying that \"You are not very well-educated and certainly not well-travelled\" when referring to the listening audience of Mr. Savage or Mr. Limbaugh.

Does this a-hole state any facts in his article? Any statistics that aren\'t pulled out of his butt? Not likely, because that would interfere with his rant, which is self serving, completely biased and totally unreasonable.

Put this guy on the O\'Reilly show and watch him wilt. I would pay money to see that a lot more than having him talk on the Savage Nation because Michael would simply call him an idiot and hang up.

Mr. Engel has an opinion, and also has a butthole. Apparently they are one and the same.

Michael (Weiner) Savage is all about entertainment
Authored by: dbsmall on Friday, March 07 2003

*sigh*.

You\'re right. Journalist\'s should cite their sources. (That includes you and me, and I note that neither of us has been too strong as far as that goes.)

But typically, you only need to cite your sources on matters that are likely to be disbelieved. I surely don\'t doubt that talk radio listeners are mostly white males, aged 18-34, with no college degree. Do you?

Protected by the Constitution, eh? He\'s writing for the Guardian, a BRITISH tabloid.

And I don\'t think he was casting doubt about Rush Limbaugh\'s listnership. He made a bad choice of adverbs: \"supposedly\". Should have left that out, or cited his source.

The rest of this OPINION/EDITORIAL piece uses those facts (whether or not they\'re right) to make an argument about why liberal talk radio won\'t make it.

Do you disagree?

(The commentary in my original story was mine. I stand by my statements, and in fact suggest you investigate WHY Rush\'s fans call themselves dittoheads.)

If there\'s something in this article you think is wrong, let\'s hear it. (I know you don\'t like the article, but for the life of me, I don\'t know why not.)

Michael (Weiner) Savage is all about entertainment
Authored by: dbsmall on Sunday, March 09 2003
Y'all should know that one of the things I like best about norcalfella is he cares. He cares deeply. Things matter to him. And so it's no surprise to me that he reacts strongly to an opinion piece.

What's odd to me is that the opinion piece takes a well-accepted fact (the demographics of talk radio) and uses that to reason that liberals won't survive with their own talk radio station.
  • It's odd because I'd have expected this to be norcalfella's own position.
  • It's odd because it's becoming clear to me that norcalfella, opinionated though he is, seems unfamiliar with the genre of "editorial"/"perspective" pieces.

On the KSFO offering "liberal views", that's not been my experience. In fact, when I was listening to "Savage Nation" the other day, I heard a promo suggesting that they were commited to conservative views. But don't take my word for it, here's a source of information :) Or, how about them hosts on KSFO?

I'm going to hypothesize what happened here. I typically take a more liberal view than ncf. I posted a story about politics. I put *my* spin on it with a half-jab at dittoheads. ncf reacted before he read Engel's article, largely because of my own jab, and because he knows my bent. Thereafter, he got caught up in his own verbal bellicosity.

Luckily, he seems to be powering his entertainment and sports stories with the raised blood pressure from this whole dialog. I do apologize for being flippant in the original story. I expect it'll happen again, since it's really my style :) But I also hope ncf and I argue over more substantive issues next time.