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Recently, a well-known shock jock and out and out curmudgeon, Michael Weiner aka Michael Savage, was added to a list of persons forbidden entry to Great Britain. His name was among various terrorists and criminals, and along with another hate speech monger, the man who started the Neo Nazi “Stormfront” website. Of course he eagerly sought to grab the spotlight again, his show and words largely ignored after he told a gay man to “Get AIDS and Die.” On live TV. He contributed to popular culture in that way, but making the famous “Misunderstood cut-off signal” one later used by the brilliant comedian Steven Colbert and a very hilarious scene in the comedy sci-fi movie “Galaxy Quest”.
He is of course milking and basking in the pusedo martyrdom, claiming his hate speech is free speech and trying to gain the public eye again. And he’s claiming the “left” is either hypocritical or must go with him, to either support his hate speech or to be branded fakes or something… He’s even proudly listing himself among other authors who’s works are banned, because complaints against his hate are piling up and getting him pulled from major bookstores. Why anyone would want to read transcribed parts of his show, to milk his full arrogant hate is beyond me. To borrow a phrase of his, this is “Just one man’s opinion” but he’s a product of the 60s that spoiled, he didn’t get much success milking “Peace and Love” for a profit angle so he turned “Counter-Counter Culture” and found the entrenched money-worshiping “Capitalist Conservative” media barons willing to feed him. Again, “Just one man’s opinion.”
So, now we “Left Wingers” are “Stuck” aren’t we? We are just like one of his victims, those that actually dare talk on his show with an opposing viewpoint. We have maybe half a sentence before he cuts us off and sometimes even screams raw vicious hatred at us. Or, we get to answer a chop-logic question, where there is no answer that he doesn’t win. And now we have to support this curmudgeon who smears himself with the toilet of his hate speech and calls himself a wise man?
No.
Get him banned.
From the air, from the bookstores, from TV.
Let him call us “Hypocrites”. He already says, as is the title of one of his hate speech books; “Liberalism is a Mental Disorder.” To call us hypocrites for liking our own speech but bashing his is either obvious (because we are crazy) or irrelevant (because we are crazy).
And, believe it or not, it’s not because my beliefs differ from his. Frankly, again “One Man’s opinion” because that man loves to sue people, but I think he doesn’t have a voice. I think, my opinion, that he is a “Sock Puppet” for the short term interests of the corporate rich elite and every statement he makes is, beyond stirring up hatred, aimed at supporting their interests. Now, even though I protect myself by saying that is “One man’s opinion” he and his supporters will want “Proof”, when did he say anything like that?
The best recent evidence of my hypothesis was that during the Wall-Street Banker bailouts he railed against Obama’s “Salary Caps” for the CEOs of the failing companies. He raved against them, calling them the “Beginning of Wealth Caps”. Now, Obama made himself clear even before this statement that he did not care in the least what a corporation paid its workers (as long as they obeyed US laws, including taxes which he’s going to make them pay) but if the company failed and it needed a handout from the taxpayers, we then get to make a few reasonable conditions. The super rich elite were screaming bloody murder and threatening congress to get their $100 million payouts, even though they earned much more as they looted pension funds and liquidated assets they expected the Taxpayers to replace.
But Michael Weiner stood adamantly against any ‘salary caps’ to firms getting bailed out, calling it (among other things) the beginning of socialism. No conflict that the firms getting bailed out in the first place was indeed a form of “Corporate Welfare” unmatched in scale.
So, “One Man’s Opinion” but I think he is a ‘sock puppet’ for the short term goals of the rich elites and the big corporations. IMHO, he’s just there to “Rabble Rouse” and divide some people against the other. We have a media monopoly that by and large has a combination of vapid news mixed with hateful “Right Wing” speech. Many places the radio stations have nothing but “Right Wingers” on all the talk shows and the music channels have no DJ’s just a “Pay list” that gets so repetitive you can set your watch to it. And again, IMHO, it’s all propaganda aimed at the remaining low wage ‘working men’ to keep them flooded with Capitalist thought so they won’t unionize or work for positive social change.
And, again “One Man’s Opinion” but if he changed his voice and actually started talking “Left Wing” not in gross mockery but in serious passion he himself would be removed from the air. “Ditto” for all his other “Peers”.
Therefore, we must indeed work to censor, to ban, to keep these people out of the public group think. In this case suppressing their “Free Speech” is the best way to save it.
Real freedom of speech has taken a nosedive since the post 9/11 power grab. There are minors thrown in adult prisons and without access to lawyers because of childish talk interpreted as threats. Scientists and independent tinkerers fear the “Dawn raid by the FBI” for purchasing the simplest of scientific equipment. And producers of pornography have been prosecuted for ‘obscenity’ even though they used willing and well paid models well over 18. Even “Thought Crime” is now becoming illegal, a fantasy can be punished as much as a real crime, if not more.
I don’t agree with Michael Savage, but I actually do want him to become what he claims to be; “A champion of Free Speech” and also a champion of the free market. Really, I do!
By getting these “Hosts of Hate” banned from the air, from the bookstores, we will help to preserve free speech. And free markets, too!
The first step is to get them banned. Listen to their shows more, write down dates and time, record if possible, for anything they say from curse words to phrases and outright statements clearly intended to incite hatred. Keep a barf bag handy. For goodness sake, he called a black man a “Subhuman” recently. The man was a career criminal, but calling him “Sub-human” while he is also black is quite racist and should have subjected him to many FCC fines. Also call, e-mail and write write write the bookstores and dealer chains to get them to take out the “Hate Speech Trash” all these books of crude 6th grade level straw man arguments and outright lies that pile up in stacks while books we “Liberals” who actually support these bookstore/coffeshops often have to order things we like. We can support the bookstores and we can withdraw our support over their hate speech.
Getting them banned will cause the next step to start itself. The Media barons will want their voices back. They will then go to court with the government over FCC fines and the stations over “Obscenity” definitions. They’ll even probably lend some support to the people abused by our legal system. That’s the double-edge of “Free Speech” it isn’t convenient speech, it’s support of speech you hate. It’s the Devil himself standing at the pew of the church to say his peace. These media barons who have steadily worked to make the country a right wing dictatorship of stupidity and anti-intellectualism will now be pushing some of their dollars and lawyers to push society back the other way, seeing their own fire burning them.
And that, my friends, lays the grounds for the third stage;
The “Fairness Doctrine” and the “Media Carta”.
The Fairness doctrine was what Reagan destroyed and helped this country slide into moving jobs overseas, plummeting wages amongst elites having unprecedented wealth and the media supporting this. The fairness doctrine must be re-instated. If it was this or being able to ban “Cayman Island tax shelters” I’d actually choose the “Fairness Doctrine”. With media companies no longer able to toe a corporate line (and maybe broken up by Monopoly/Trust laws) they’ll have to generate profits and the best profits are from the controversy and drama of opposing viewpoints and good old fashioned “Muckraking” where the dredge of the sewers of the toxic rich elite are raked up and put on the printing press for all to see. Re-instate the fairness doctrine and a lot of their lies will fade.
The “Media Carta” is another part of this. We need more access to the airwaves. For years, groups like “Adbusters” have been making socially conscious ads they are willing to pay good money for to get on the air, only to be refused by the big companies that don’t share their view and own an illegally large portion of the airwaves so they can effectively ‘ban’ anyone they want. It wasn’t always this way, as a child I used to laugh my little head off seeing Lyndon LaRouch claim Ronald Reagan was a member of the KGB. Even as a grade schooler I knew enough “Critical Thinking” to highly doubt it, but it was a laugh. People deserve the right to have a voice in public, and the beginning of that is to open the airwaves to truly fair journalism and to let people willing to pay for airtime have their own shows. With modern cable TV we can have 500 channels. We could all make our own shows like YouTube videos and pay a little to have them on for a while. With no media barons, we might indeed have some ‘next big things’ that were decided by popular opinion, and that opinion buying advertisers who then generated revenue to make more and better shows.
So, though I dislike his views, I say we indeed ban Michael Savage and his vile “Peers”. Let them become the “Martyrs and champions of free speech” they claim to be. And along the way have them and their corporate owners do a lot of hard and expensive work to help us all win back our right to free speech.
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