Even with a new government in power in Great Britain, one thing is remaining the same: the new government of David Cameron wants to keep the ban in place on bombastic American talk show host Michael Savage:
Right-wing U.S. shock jock Michael Savage is still Britain’s least wanted man.
That’s the word from London, where a new coalition government led by Prime Minister David Cameron has decided to continue preventing the conservative radio host and author from entering the country, over comments the prior government felt were violent and threatening. His name appears on a list of 16 individuals the government considers to be a threat to public safety.
Others banned from entering the island nation include Nazi sympathizers, a grand wizard in the Ku Klux Klan, “God hates fags” preacher Fred Phelps and an array of radical Muslims.
Savage has responded by calling his battle over being on the list a ‘ “true nightmare of Kafka.”
News of the ban first broke in May 2009. See our previous post here. Since then, Savage has waged a passionate campaign to get the ban on him lifted from Great Britain. He remains a talk show host who is a bit more difficult to totally characterize, unlike the reliably all-Democrats-are-bad and let’s-defend-Republicans-unless-they-criticize-me Rush Limbaugh, Glenn “The Outer Limits” Beck, or Sean “RNC Talking Points Rip N Read” Hannity. Michael Reagan, one of the more independent Republican talk show voices, has retired from a daily talk show.
Savage can launch into a riff about a book or movie or do 5 minutes passionately talking about what makes the perfect Italian meatball. The New Yorker captured some of the many layers and seeming contradictions of Savage in a profile.
Even on politics, he can be one of the more unpredictable conservative talk show hosts, often taking angry potshots at GOPers and dissing the Republican party itself. But what has gained him is international notoriety — and given Media Matters so much ongoing material — is Savage’s often over-the-top-rhetoric against liberals, Muslims and Democrats which is often laced with angry, at times almost yelling, rage.
His most famous media moment was this response to this call to his short-lived MSNBC show which got him fired:
Savage features news about the continued ban featured prominently on his website. He has framed his problems with Great Britain as being a free speech issue. Over the years, Savage has talked to and sometimes been blasted by Bill O’Reilly (who called him a “smear merchant”). In Glenn Beck’s earlier, kinder gentler incarnation he interviewed Savage on Larry King Live about some of his controversial comments such as on autism. He has blasted Glenn Beck (who he calls the “hemorrhoid with eyes”), Sean Hannity, and Rush Limbaugh for ripping his show off.
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.