Michael Savage loses in court; cleveland drops him; conservatives hate him; the nation scorns him; but he's still workin'!

"This guy's a knucklehead, and I want to get rid of him," Mark Jaycox, told the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Knucklehead? Those may be harsh words in Ohio, but they're tame describing Michael Savage, (KTTH m-f, 6-9p) who calls Obama an "Afro-Leninist," and played a Dead Kennedys song while discussing Ted Kennedy's a malignant brain tumor.

WHK, the only Cleveland station carrying Michael Savage is breaking its contract with Savage's syndicator, Talk Radio Network. Jaycox manages Salem Communications' Cleveland cluster.

(photo: Savage used to sell herbal extracts and supplements)

Savage had a bad week. His idiotic, racketeering nuisance suit against the Council on American-Islamic Relations, or CAIR, was thrown out of court; and a predictable firestorm from parents, medical experts and disabilities advocates broke out after he called autism a “fraud” during his July 16 show, saying that “in 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out.”

He may not be the go-to guy for diagnoses of such things: he once wrote a book "Liberalism Is a Mental Disorder." Clever that may be, but diagnostically, it's a joke, and  a way to sell the book.

Most of Savage's diagnoses and prognostications are designed to sell something such as his radio show, his books or his Michael Savage gear.

But Savage began losing advertisers, and radio stations.

Thursday,his syndicator, Talk Radio Network, said in a statement that it investigated Savage’s comments and doesn’t plan to fire him.

“The Network is satisfied that he did not mean any disrespect to autistic children or their families but was instead reiterating his longstanding concerns on public health issues,” the statement said.

In a new book, Shock Jocks: Hate Speech & Talk Radio, published last month by the liberal imprint AlterNet Books, Savage comes in at No. 3 in "The Top 10 Worst Shock Jocks after Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity.

According to author Rory O'Connor, even conservatives hate him:

Savage is so extreme that even many of his fellow right-wing talk radio personalities don't like him. Bill O'Reilly calls him a "smear merchant," while Neal Boortz refers to Savage as "the Antichrist." Although Talkers Magazine recently bestowed its annual Freedom of Speech award upon Savage, publisher Michael Harrison says he thinks the man is "an asshole."

Marketwatch, the financial website on the Wall Street Journal's Digital Network writes, Savage has also used his bully-pulpit to declare that:

-- High levels of asthma impacting minority children was because "the children got extra welfare if they were disabled." (July 2008)
-- The "handicapped" workers at the Phoenix Cafe would "drool" and put dung in diners food. (July 2002)
-- Members of the disability rights community are the "Wheelchair Mafia."
-- The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), the world's first civil rights law for people with disabilities, should be called the "Lawyers' Improvement Act."
-- His political opponents are "degenerate slime bags" with "mental disorders" and have a "virus like leukemia."
-- When he was younger, he "touched the hand of a midget [dwarf]," it really "freaked him out" and, since that episode, he doesn't like public places. (June 2004)
-- The "autism lobby of devastated parents is just a scam to get more money."

This is the sociopathy of business, a disorder especially prevalent in media. To them, Savage is product -- one of the highest money generators on the radio. You can't expect media pimps to give up such a producer unless and until he costs them.

That'd take a critical mass of the public gathered against him and/or clients have dropped him.The disabled don't have sufficient organization, clout, or the collective public guilt and sympathy that other minorities have, so we don't this to go anywhere.

Don Imus went down under that pressure, but remember: he's back

Comments

[KS]

He's only the third rated Shock jock ? That's rather disappointing.. Maybe that's sheer numbers of listeners. Savage is more shocking than either Limbaugh or Hannity and is less of an ideologue than either of those two. He has called Bush 43, the worst commander in chief in history of America more than one occasion.

[Larson]

One thing you can say for living in liberal Seattle is that Michael Savage is a total ratings failure around here.

[joanie]

Isn't that wonderful, Lars?

[Gay Gary]

Why is this man on the LDS-owned KTTH?

-- His political opponents are "degenerate slime bags" with "mental disorders" and have a "virus like leukemia."

Luke Burbank has said he wishes his opponents had been sexually molested by pedophile adults when they were young children.

[Sesttlejew]

Four hundred years ago, the Jewish community of Amsterdam (or was it only the Hague) improperly adopted the Christian practice of excommunication and applied it to Spinoza.

Controversial at the time, cherem has since been rules inadmissable.

To bad. I would personally move to submit msrs. Medved and Savage to cherem.

[Duffman]

SJ: Your Rabbi is currently on KVI, sitting in for Kirby.

[Tommy008]

Mark Levin will have a field day over Savag's case big thrown out of court.....OMG Rabbi Lapin is sitting in today on KVI. He just admitted to being a real life Robert Niro in Meet The Parents. He said that when one of his daughters is dating a guy she's serious about, he obtains a handwriting sample from the young man and sends it to a handwriting analyst he knows. Has he raised a bunch of spineless wimp girls who put up with this obnoxious domination an meddling in their personal affairs? I can just see Lapin watching the needles jump over his nosy, asinine questions, as the young man is strapped into the lie detector machine.

[breb]

Savage doesn't pretend to be a Jew anymore. If you don't believe the myths, you are an atheist, are you still a Jew just because you like bagels?

[sara]

Shun this man. He has the right to say all this, but we don't have to pay attention to him. That is obviously all he's got- everybody being shocked at the garbage he spews.

[sparky]

I think the truly shocking thing is that someone agreed to have sex with him in order for him to have kids.

ew.

[orcas]

Rumors about the demise of Michael Savage have been greatly exaggerated. There are only two radio talk shows host with a bigger radio audience than Savage; Limbaugh and Hannity. An audience of 8.5 million makes Savage an absolute superstar of radio broadcasting.

[sparky]

8.5 million people with a collective I.Q. of 14

[Fred]

I do not listen, nor have I ever listened to Savage. However, I have read of some of his psychotic rants and I find it ironic that he does not laud the ADA and anti-discrimination statutes, which he instead so frequently decries. After all, his show's syndicate has hired and continues to pay Wiener, a person with clear mental illness, and he doesn't have the guts (or sanity)to thank anyone.