Michael Savage has sparked a demonstration in San Francisco after jokingly suggesting Latino students on a hunger strike should be allowed to die.
Over the line? Or used as a prextext for publicity? The San Francisco Examiner:
On a sunny Tuesday in San Francisco, a vocal group of Latino protesters gathered with Supervisor Gerardo Sandoval on the steps of City Hall, where they claimed that conservative talk-radio blowhard Michael Savage made derogatory comments about a group of hunger strikers and demanded that he be removed from Bay Area radio station KNEW.
Which sounds like a great idea.
But it does not, of course, have a prayer of happening.
Not that anyone was pretending that it did. The protesters knew that the extremely popular Savage (he claims 10 million listeners around the nation) probably wasn’t going to get taken off the air in San Francisco. And Savage knows perfectly well that he is in no danger of being attacked by an angry mob incited by Sandoval, although he is claiming otherwise on his Web site .
It was all part of San Francisco political theater. And if it seems predictable and pat, veteran supervisor Tom Ammiano – who is already getting the usual heinous and moronic hate mail from Savage’s supporters – says it is still a worthwhile exercise.
“For me, I’ve been through this many, many times,” Ammiano says. “It’s show biz. But the issue is to respond in kind” to comments like Savage’s.
Read the rest of the article. Here’s the San Jose Mercury’s take on this story as well.
And indeed, it sounds like both sides got something useful. The demonstrators got a cause for an angry demonstration that raised the issue of immigration — and lots of publicity. And Savage, whose ratings have been increasing anyway, will likely pick up even more listeners.
But isn’t just San Francisco political theater. It’s the way our national political culture now operates.
There’s as much chance of Savage being fired over his comments as there is for Michael Vick’s being hired as spokesman for PetCo.
Watch this video that explains the controversy (which includes a news interview with Savage):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0SLCz1eCFY&mode=related&search=
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.