IN MY SHOES: What It’s Like To Be Michael Savage
The New York Times notes that, “the humbling of Don Imus … has done nothing to quiet Michael Savage, a radio host with a far bigger following and far more checkered track record.” The article, which reports on his lawsuit (fourth item, The Daily Blade) against the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), includes a profile of Savage. Here are highlights:
“Remember, I’m a New Yorker. I grew up [a Jew from The Bronx] on sarcasm and satire. People are too literal, No. 1, and they don’t have a true sense of humor, No. 2.”
Mr. Savage proudly calls himself conservative, even right wing, and his audience has proved to be both enormous and loyal …
Mr. Savage can be surprisingly unintimidating in person, standing 5-foot-7 and looking, on this day, like he had sprung from an L. L. Bean catalog in a bright orange corduroy shirt, black fleece vest and tan chinos, with a miniature poodle at his feet. …
But whether on the air or off, Mr. Savage delights in being provocative. …
“I’m not really a stealth liberal off the air.” …
[D]uring his 20s and 30s he was “super left-wing,” including the times he worked as a welfare worker on the Upper West Side of
But he turned sharply to the right after, among other things, finding that his welfare clients were often living better than he, and that despite a Ph.D. he couldn’t get a college teaching job after five years of trying. “I was the wrong race,” he said. “I was the wrong sex.”
Eventually he made a demo tape and was hired by KGO, a
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