Surprise: Mike "Savage" Weiner is voting Bush!

Who could have seen this coming? Media Matters for America has reported that Mike Weiner has been so disgusted by the Democratic Convention that he's "decided" that he must vote for Dubya. He had this to say on his July 28 show:

You know something; I'm voting for Bush, I just made up my mind. There's nothing in this for me. I'm a white male, I'm a white, male, married heterosexual -- I don't want the Democrats. Everywhere I turn, there's another hot coal in my eye. For example, today's DNC calendar of public events included lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender meeting, the disability meeting, the ethnic meeting, the American Indian meeting, the Asian/Pacific Islander meeting, the Hispanic meeting, and the African American meeting -- God bless 'em, they're entitled to their meeting, I'm entitled to my vote, they're not my party, end of story. And that's it. I'm not voting for a party of ethnic minorities and women and immigrants.

It wasn't so very long ago that I had no idea who this asshole was. He was just another in a long list of hate-spewing right-wingers that I don't listen to. I have no fascination with the ideas of racists. Then came a disturbing revelation: I not only knew of him, I actually knew him well enough to have cultivated a deep dislike. These were the musings that I wrote about my moment of realization:

"...A man does not go forward through life along a straight, horizontal path; often he does not stop at the stations indicated on the time table; sometimes he goes off the track completely; sometimes he dives below and is lost for a time, or he takes to the air and is flung against the side of a steep cliff...What goes on at every moment in the life of each and every man is something forever unfathomable and inexhaustible to relate. No man can possibly relate the whole story..." --Henry Miller

People constantly reinvent themselves. Actors have made it their art, and fat radio show hosts are no different. Rush Limbaugh is a good example and his contradictions have been well studied. Michael "Savage" is another matter.I have never listened to Michael "Savage". I don't spend any time listening to hate radio because my philosophy does not allow me to "bind" myself to things things which I despise. However, I can't help but be aware of him especially with his recent statements about the prisoners of Abu Gh'raib.Last night, over on the Media Matters for America website I saw the following item:

Savage: "the Asians still chew 'em [dogs] up

On the May 21 Savage Nation, nationally syndicated radio host Michael Savage expressed disdain for a newspaper article about "what breeds of dogs came first" that did not include that "the Asians still chew 'em [dogs] up." SAVAGE: [apparently reading from an article in USA Today] "Researchers have surprising news about what breeds of dogs came first and which dogs are more closely related." What do I give a rat's behind about which dog is related? Why is this study done? All I know is we treat dogs very well here, and the great originators of the dog eat them. How come they don't put that in their story about 'em, the Asians still chew 'em up? In China they're in cages waiting to be cooked. Yeah, I know, you're not supposed to say that. All the quiet, sacred soy eaters over there."
— N.C.Posted to the web on Tuesday May 25, 2004

Nothing is very original about this ugly statement. Its cliched racism is almost feeble. However, two things caught my eye. Why did he use the politically correct term "Asian" when more highly-charged racist ones were available? And what about the statement's ending: "All the quiet, sacred soy eaters over there." What the hell was that supposed to mean? Anyone else would have dismissed the whole thing as meaningless garbage spewed out to fill radio time. Of course, I'm not anyone else...I began Googling "Michael Savage" and there it was! Michael (Weiner) Savage! I already knew I didn't know anything about Mr. Savage, but it had finally dawned on me that I knew a lot about Mike Weiner...

In the summer of 1969, after a few months away to attend art school in San Francisco, I returned to Honolulu, Hawaii, to live with my girlfriend. She was a student at the University (as I had been earlier) and since I had returned totally addicted to film culture, we decided to start a film society at UH. Ours was named with the mysterious acronym, CROW, and presented classic and serious foreign films. A rival group, the Village East Film Society, specialised in avant-garde, cult, and exploitation films. Needless to say, Village East made more money. And who were the marketing geniuses who gave people what they wanted? Michael Weiner and his wife Janet. Really now, how could the Japanese classic Throne of Blood or Fritz Lang's Metropolis compete with Pink Flamingos, Paul Morrissey's transvestite-liberation opus, Women in Revolt, cult favorites like Brand X, Putney Swope, and Dynamite Chicken, or Andy Warhol's controversial Blue Movie? The Weiners gave the University what they wanted and what they wanted was more of the same...

I personally have no problem with any of the films I've mentioned, and to be honest, I can't remember a single film that Mike Weiner chose to show that I would object to on a moral basis. I wonder however, what the homophobic "Michael Savage" would have to say about them? Certainly, the bulk of the films celebrated sex of every conceivable kind (and yet not even Mike had imagined the fims of Abu Gh'raib).

Now, perhaps you say that the morally lax Michael Weiner had some sort of "religious" conversion, reborn as the upright Michael Savage? Well, not until a few more reinventions. In the mid-70's he moved to San Francisco to get a PhD in Botany, and published 3 books filled with material ripped-off from older enthnobotanical studies. He then tried to ingratiate himself into the North Beach "Beatnik" community, covered in the interesting article Savage Beatnik. More of his exploits are covered by the site Michael Savage Sucks and they have links to a wealth of material. Most recently, Salon.com has labelled him, Michael Savage: America's laziest fascist. Well, Mike, you sure have been busy! Boy were we all wrong when we thought you were just a fat haole from New York. I'm really sorry for all the pranks I used to play on you...