pscyhotic radio host Michael Savage sounded defensive and almost whiney last week when I tuned in for a few minutes to hear if he would comment on the backlash from his "autistic kids are brats who need to be told to stop acting like morons" rant. He's got reason to whine:
A group of seven Mississippi talk radio stations owned by Telesouth Communications has dropped Michael Savage’s nationally syndicated radio program over comments the host made last week suggesting that nearly every child with autism was “a brat” of inattentive parents. “Michael Savage’s comments about autistic children were beyond inexcusable and are unacceptable,” the station group said in a statement posted Tuesday on its Web site, supertalkms.com. The cancellation follows the decision on Monday by Aflac, the insurance company, to pull its advertising from the show. On his Web site, Michaelsavage.com, the host posted a letter on Monday in which he iterated the central point he said he had been trying to make on his July 16 program: that autism is too often misdiagnosed in the cases of children, or falsely diagnosed, at least partly as a means of wringing resources. “Let the truly autistic be treated,” he wrote. “Let the falsely diagnosed be free.” On July 16, Mr. Savage, above, referred to autism as “a fraud, a racket,” and asserted that what “99 percent” of children with autism most needed was a parent willing to tell them things like, “Don’t act like a moron.” The radio wack job has also lost affiliates in Virginia and Cleveland, and the duckie isn't the only advertiser that's heading for the hills: Six more major companies have yanked ads from Michael Savage's talk-radio show after he branded autistic children "brats."
Home Depot, Sears and Budweiser all withdrew their support from the fiery hatemonger's program, along with Direct Buy, Cisco and Radio Shack, according to Autism United. Even Annheuser Busch, which has given so much to Weiner's friend John McCain via the missus, is saying "Savage who?"
UPATE: According to Allaccess.com, here's how it went down in Cleveland: SALEM Talk WHK-A/CLEVELAND is dropping TALK RADIO NETWORK's MICHAEL SAVAGE in the wake of the controversy over SAVAGE's comments about autism, according to the CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER. The paper's JULIE E. WASHINGTON reports that the station has a contract to carry SAVAGE through 2010 but that station manager MARK JAYCOX told her "This guy's a knucklehead, and I want to get rid of him." And Autism United isn't sitting back waiting for other sponsors to walk: "We are going after each and every advertiser that hasn't dropped him yet," said Evelyn Ain, president of Autism United, who joined angry parents in a protest on Wall Street Friday. "We are doing this in all states and really hoping that more people will immediately drop out supporting him. We are going after every angle." Get him, guys. If anyone deserves to lose his radio gig and wind up sleeping in his car, it's Savage. It's one thing to go after politicians, but autistic kids? Come on. I know conservatives hate the defenseless, but wingers also believe in free market consequences, so let's let Savage get to know the market first hand. And for anyone on the right who might be tempted to defend Savage, this is what he said: “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Act like a man.” The OC Register's blog has Savage's feeble attempt to rehabilitate his comments, which he also try to do via the New York Times. Savage still has the third most listened to program in America, which says a lot -- and nothing good -- about America's talk radio listeners...
| Labels: autism, Michael Savage, right wing nut-jobs, talk radio |
