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sisyphusshruggedARTIFACT
RIGHT-WING SHLOCK-JOCK MIKE SAVAGE HAS A SECRET.
ed. note: Other than appalling taste in poetry, you mean? Full disclosure - Mr. Ginsburg said something rude about my grandfather's restaurant in the otherwise tastefully measured Howl, but I wasn't a big fan before I knew (or after I met him).
Since recapping his racist and homophobic rants in our premiere issue, we've learned that the ex-liberal (aka Michael Weiner) whose syndicated radio program The Savage Nation (aka Sieg Heil on the Dial) was scooped up by a desperate MSNBC was once a close friend and pen-pal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It took a search of the Howl author's collected letters at Stanford University to discover just how close:
March 8, 1970
Dear Allen:
After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little—known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old—world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand — I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, "I must have felt the vibes."
Michael Weiner
Botany Dept.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI
Now, the dope-smoking, boy-loving grand dame of '60s degeneracy didn't seem like the kind of riffraff a nationally renowned homophobic zealot would have on his buddy list. But we shouldn't have been so surprised. In Savage's thinly veiled confessional novel Vital Signs, the protagonist admits he is allured by "masculine beauty", saying, "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks. More intriguing is the reported existence of a picture of Savage and Ginsberg swimming naked together in Fiji." These days, of course, Savage is more prone to saying, "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children!" Ah, the innocence of youth.
edit: from the always pertinent, except when he's im-, which is good too, supergee, in comments:
so maybe it's just a little orange-segment shaped wedge on Mr. Weiner's personal fascism venn diagram.
The question is, who other than the current incarnation of Mr. Weiner-Savage cares?
edit: I really should give some background on this too.
Here's why Mr. Savage is such a favorite of mine these days.
Neal Pollack, who I should have linked to in the earlier post and would have except that he's blocked for (you're going to love this, although possibly you can't appreciate it properly without having spent some time in my industry) "Tastelessness" on our network at work, is spearheading a day to to beat Mr. Savage up on our blogs.
Those of you who remember how much fun Mock the Cheneys day was (after they went after whitehouse.org) will, I'm sure, be lining up again. We need new people too.
A souvenir of Mock the Cheneys day
I hate to admit it, but she does have a certain bowery bar gamine charm this way.
I'm afraid I've been saving this stuff up all week to handle this weekend. I guess I'm leaving some stuff out.
Good catch...
RIGHT-WING SHLOCK-JOCK MIKE SAVAGE HAS A SECRET.
ed. note: Other than appalling taste in poetry, you mean? Full disclosure - Mr. Ginsburg said something rude about my grandfather's restaurant in the otherwise tastefully measured Howl, but I wasn't a big fan before I knew (or after I met him).
Since recapping his racist and homophobic rants in our premiere issue, we've learned that the ex-liberal (aka Michael Weiner) whose syndicated radio program The Savage Nation (aka Sieg Heil on the Dial) was scooped up by a desperate MSNBC was once a close friend and pen-pal of Beat poet Allen Ginsberg. It took a search of the Howl author's collected letters at Stanford University to discover just how close:
March 8, 1970
Dear Allen:
After speaking to you on the phone about how nice the black-white thing is in mountain villages in Fiji, I walked downstairs to the school courtyard, where a little—known black brother looks at me, takes my hand gently, we do some old—world Lower East Side finger tricks, and he peacefully kisses the back of my hand — I do the same for his hand. I told him about our brief talk, and he says, "I must have felt the vibes."
Michael Weiner
Botany Dept.
University of Hawaii
Honolulu, HI
Now, the dope-smoking, boy-loving grand dame of '60s degeneracy didn't seem like the kind of riffraff a nationally renowned homophobic zealot would have on his buddy list. But we shouldn't have been so surprised. In Savage's thinly veiled confessional novel Vital Signs, the protagonist admits he is allured by "masculine beauty", saying, "I choose to override my desires for men when they swell in me, waiting out the passions like a storm, below decks. More intriguing is the reported existence of a picture of Savage and Ginsberg swimming naked together in Fiji." These days, of course, Savage is more prone to saying, "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children!" Ah, the innocence of youth.
edit: from the always pertinent, except when he's im-, which is good too, supergee, in comments:
"At the risk of being accused of fruity tendencies, I have to say that the masculine body is much more attractive than the soft female body"--George Lincoln Rockwell
so maybe it's just a little orange-segment shaped wedge on Mr. Weiner's personal fascism venn diagram.
The question is, who other than the current incarnation of Mr. Weiner-Savage cares?
edit: I really should give some background on this too.
Here's why Mr. Savage is such a favorite of mine these days.
Neal Pollack, who I should have linked to in the earlier post and would have except that he's blocked for (you're going to love this, although possibly you can't appreciate it properly without having spent some time in my industry) "Tastelessness" on our network at work, is spearheading a day to to beat Mr. Savage up on our blogs.
Those of you who remember how much fun Mock the Cheneys day was (after they went after whitehouse.org) will, I'm sure, be lining up again. We need new people too.
A souvenir of Mock the Cheneys day
I hate to admit it, but she does have a certain bowery bar gamine charm this way.
I'm afraid I've been saving this stuff up all week to handle this weekend. I guess I'm leaving some stuff out.
Good catch...
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no subject
Date: 2003-06-14 07:30 am (UTC)I'm afraid that at the moment, we do have to care about Mr. Savage
Date: 2003-06-14 10:26 am (UTC)(The "almost incoherent" part is important; it means he doesn't even bother to give his views the appearance of rational discourse. He's selling unreasoning hate, and implicit permission for his fans to engage in same.)
The other reason we can't ignore him -- and forgive me if you already know all about this -- is that he's harassing and bringing lawsuits against three websites, trying to have them shut down. One of them is Take Back the Media. You can read about it here:
http://www.takebackthemedia.com/com-lawsuit-6-6.html
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=16105
http://www.buzzflash.com/interviews/03/06/03_stinson.html
The insane right-wing closet case is a known species; look at Roy Cohn and J. Edgar Hoover. They did a lot of damage. This guy can too.
--tnh (http://nielsenhayden.com/makinglight)
Re: I'm afraid that at the moment, we do have to care about Mr. Savage
Date: 2003-06-14 10:51 am (UTC)If someone who hadn't read the earlier post had read this one, they'd have no idea what the stakes are here.
Post edited for coherence.
Re: I'm afraid that at the moment, we do have to care about Mr. Savage
Date: 2003-06-14 10:52 am (UTC)