Savage

Michael Savage is insane.

He lost his post at MSNBC after telling a gay caller to “get AIDS and die.” Since then, he’s been working hard to position himself as the persecuted champion of conservatism (“We need less compassion, and more conservatism,” he likes to say.)

Part of his recovery plan involved a live performance near San Francisco: Savage Uncensored. According to this Salon article, not even the audience of True Believers who shelled out a hundred bucks a head found the program satisfying. And who would? Apparently, the evening devolved into watching Michael Savage guzzle a bit too much champagne and shout insults (“Kiss my ass!” ) at televised images of foreign leaders.

After hearing about this, um, event, I decided to tune into Mr. Savage’s radio program last night. I mean, I’ve been listening to Air America’s Al Franken for several weeks now. Listening to Savage express his ultra-right-wing point of view might provide some balance.

Nope.

Last night, Mr. Savage simply had nothing to do. Perhaps because there were no callers and no guests, he came across as desperate to fill airtime. Having nothing original to say, he resorted to reading a series of old headlines and news articles from 1942, which he positioned as the Golden Age of Journalism.

During that time period, of course, it was fairly common for journalists to refer to the Japanese as “the enemy.” Article after article talks about the Yellow Threat, and it wasn’t uncommon for news accounts to trumpet the “slaughter” of the opposing side. (“They dropped like dead flies,” one account intones.)

It’s the language of propaganda, of course — deliberately inflammatory, and, by today’s standards, comic in its overt intensity. Savage, of course, holds this up as a shining example of what Journalism Ought to Be. “How long since you heard Tom Brokaw refer to slaughtered Iraqis as The Enemy?” Savage asked.

(Poor Michael. As it turned out, he didn’t even have enough of these yellowed clipping to fill his hour … so he started reading the same ones over and over again.)

This is an old trick, of course, and it’s easy to pull. All you have to do is arbitrarily take the stance “Older is better.” At first, it’s very appealing, because it plays to our sense of nostalgia: “Remember the good old days?”

But it’s a fallacy, of course. Are all attitudes expressed sixty years ago necessarily better, by virtue of being older? Here’s a report from the same time period:

The past era either entirely ignored human inequality, or else acted contrary to its better knowledge. [They thought that, though intermarrage with other races] … the native population would … be raised to the level of the whites. But these mixed marriages produced unhappy bastards where neither white nor native. In most cases, they inherited the bad characteristics of both groups, lacking spiritual stability. In our time too, certain people occasionally lacked a feeling for racial honor or racial defilement. The numerous bastards resulting from relations with the black occupation forces in the Rhine region, or those that came from relations between Jews and Germans, are tragic examples.

— source: Handbook for Hitler Youth Leaders

It’s old. It’s bold. But does that make its sentiments better … or wiser?

Frankly, if all the ultra-right has to offer is a nostalgia for the “good old days” when propaganda went unquestioned … I think I’ll pass.