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Talk radio host Michael Savage.
There’s something the Brits may not be revealing about why Michael Savage won’t be summering in Derbyshire.
I’ll give you a hint: you’re getting warmer.
Twitter was been… all atwitter over Tuesday’s report at Politics Daily that inflammatory radio talk show host Michael Savage has been named on the British governments list of sixteen undesirable individuals who are banned from entering the United Kingdom.
The British Home Secretary (the equivalent of the US Secretary of Homeland Security), Jacqui Smith, is given credit in the Politics Daily article for making the decision to make the names public. According to Tuesday’s World Net Daily, Smith appeared on Britain’s GMTV and dispensed with subtlety.
Smith explained to Britain’s GMTV that she believed it was “important that people understand the sorts of values and sorts of standards that we have here, the fact that it’s a privilege to come and the sort of things that mean you won’t be welcome in this country.”
“Coming to this country is a privilege,” she said. “If you can’t live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country and, what’s more, now we will make public those people that we have excluded.”
US talk show host Michael Savage – real name Michael Weiner – is also excluded because of his views on immigration, Islam, rape and autism, which have reportedly caused great offence in America.
I’m not a fan of Mr. Savage, so the last part - that his views cross into offensive territory - is uncontested. The idea that his views might pose a threat to the United Kingdom or its citizens – as do other persons who made it on the list - is, however, preposterous. Even if his views might incite violence from some radical corners, it is a case of blaming fuse for setting off the bomb. If Britain is a teeming pool of volatile hate, only waiting for someone to walk along and toss a match, that is a societal problem for the British to tackle as a nation.
Smith has been taking heat for some time from Brits on the subject of her labeling and re-labeling of extremists to align with the political correctness of the Liberal Party, but this latest decision may cross a line that is difficult for her to jump back on the other side of. In the country that gave George Orwell to the world - even without the free speech protections Americans take for granted - stretching the definition of “behavior” to include speech may add fuel to the burning notion voiced by her fellow Brits that Smith has moved beyond her mission to protect the motherland from existential threats and has assumed authority to conduct a political cleansing of Britain as well.
And that is where this story becomes far more interesting. Evidence presents itself that Savage’s views on “immigration, Islam, rape and autism” may not be the sole gripe the British government could have with Savage and thus not the only possible motive for having the denial of his visa application. No, Savage’s greatest sin may be heresy against the One True Religion of Global Warming. Savage is what Global Warming proponents now brand as a denier and he is getting together with other deniers to discuss their dangerous denier ideas.
Today also, the environmental blog at The Guardian reported that former adviser to Margaret Thatcher, Christopher Monckton, one of The Guardian’s “top 10 climate change deniers” was given a “lengthy” interview on Savage’s radio program. Monckton’s statements that “the science is bad, the ‘consensus’ is wrong” and accusing the United Nations of scientific fraud have been a mote in the eye of Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s radical climate change agenda.
Could Savage’s agreement with Monckton that the fear-mongering by global warming proponents is, at best irresponsible and, at worst, a deliberate manipulation of facts for devious ends, be enough to earn a rebuke of this magnitude? Well, governments get their feelings hurt pretty easily and their responses are often undignified. If you’re old enough, you can remember the ugliness of the Naturalization Service’s denial of John Lennon’s application for visa renewal in January 1972. It has been put forward that the F.B.I. shared files with the Nixon administration from surveillance they had conducted on Lennon, files containing details suggesting Lennon would actively campaigning against the President’s re-election.
If Savage’s failure to accept dogma and confess his sin of heresy is the real crime for which he is being punished, then the message Smith is sending may be intended for British citizens more than external ‘foes’. By her own account, Smith is defining the kinds of behavior that are considered unacceptable, and Savage is an example. If outsiders can be judged to have misbehaved, why not insiders? By erecting a straw man, the British government offers friendly lessons to all of its subjects on what not to do. Lesson: Don’t speak about any of the things Michael Savage speaks about.
Could an aggressive campaign by the government to intimidate skeptical commentary on global warming occur in the US? I wouldn’t have thought so until last month’s release of the embarrassing Department of Homeland Security report on right-wing extremism which appeared to be a shovel-ready tool for law enforcement to begin tracking political opponents of the Obama administration.
There is a major reason to anticipate that, in the near future, global warming ‘denier’ will become the number one slur slung at enemies of the left and the Obama administration’s entwined energy and economic policy. As cap and trade restrictions cause increases in the consumer prices of energy (as well as all other goods that require energy to produce; in a nutshell, everything) the banner of saving the planet from utter destruction will be raised as a way of rationalizing every American’s sacrifice as part of a life and death struggle. Skeptics will be labeled loony or irresponsible; anyone disputing the underlying premise smeared as greedy, evil villains.
If politics were Top 40 radio, “Why Do You Want Our Planet to Die?” and “I’m Right, and You’re Wrong Because You Don’t Agree With Me” would be the chart-toppers of the summer of ‘09. Just like most pop music: great beat to dance to, but the lyrics just don’t make much sense.
When DJ ‘Bama starts spinning these tunes this summer, telling Americans to shut up and dance, I’ll be the one singing my own tune and counting down the days until November 2, 2010 when we have our best chance to throw out the entire playlist and have a real debate on this and so many other issues.
Comments
Kudos to the British for having the sense to ban a truly repulsive example of the worst of what America has to export to the world. Let's hope they don't stop there.
The Brits have outdone themselves in being pusillanimous, or as we say in American vernacular, in being pussies, wimps, cowards. What's up with the land of Magna Carta? You don't like Savage's views? Are you also censoring Hyde Park these days? Up yours, Brits! It won't be long before the Rag Heads take away your booze and bangers, what with there being against Sharia law and all. Keep your friggin' island!
A very well written article.
Michael Savage, July 2, 2007: "You know, when I see a woman walking around with a burqa, I see a Nazi. That's what I see -- how do you like that? -- a hateful Nazi who would like to cut your throat and kill your children. Don't give me this crap that they're doing it out of a sacred ritual or rite. It's not required by the Quran that a woman walk around in a seventh-century drape. She's doing it to spit in your face. She's saying, "You white moron, you, I'm going to kill you if I can." That's how I see it!"
You sorry Brits are all a bunch of pussies!
As a nation now known chiefly for bad teeth and degenerate pop stars, your once mighty stature has fallen, fallen.
You are used to being hag-ridden by twaddlers like this, but, at least as Savage shows, we still have enough balls to fight back.
Cowards !
Hypocrites!
Goats and Monkeys!
That's right Josey ban people who hold different views from you. Nice to see ferakin' totalitarians like you coming out of the closet now and spreading your Nazi ideas. Maybe the USA should ban people from coming here if they don't "believe in" capitalism or democracy? Motard!
MJB Wolf says:
"That's right Josey ban people who hold different views from you. Nice to see ferakin' totalitarians like you coming out of the closet now and spreading your Nazi ideas. Maybe the USA should ban people from coming here if they don't "believe in" capitalism or democracy? Motard!"
We already do ban people. The US has a long list of banned people.
I admit my error. I said Obama is a FRAUD and a hyper-partisan straw man, but "what I meant to say was - Obama and UK's Ma J. Smith are both FRAUDS...pandering as they must to their covert financial backers and respective hate groups.
Well written. I've lived so many years in fear that I'd say something that someone would take the wrong way. I'm tried of trying to be politically correct, particularly since the politics are usually one-sided.
Funny to suggest the Global Warming angle. I hadn't thought of that but it seems extremely unlikely and more than slightly paranoid. I mean, really. We just supported you in an oil war and are building loads of new coal fired power stations over here. Climate change deniers are welcome and have prime time tv shows where they boast about how little mileage they get out of their fast cars while claiming that truck drivers murder prostitutes for laughs. Michael Savage would love it.
It'll have been the Islam thing. Our politicians are more sensitive about Islam than they are over climate change denialism by a factor that compares favourably to the size of our external debt as measured in Zimbabwe dollars (soon to be equal to the Pound if we keep printing money).
You see some idiot will have been trying to 'balance' the issue as we banned a load of extremist Islamists a short while back and so now the government has been banning a few people it perceives as extremist anti-islamists as it doesn't want to look one-sided. Jacqui Smith is a bit like that - if in doubt, ban everything so no-one can accuse you of favouritism. The really major problem, other than her ban fetish, is that she couldn't find her own arse with both hands and a map and so is just choosing really random people to ban. It was an elected Dutch MP last time. Besides she's the finished anyway ever since her husband was caught spending her public expense account on pornographic pay-per-view a few weeks back.
Oh and as to the idea that we are walking with our eyes closed into a totalitarian state, nothing could be further from the truth. We are walking with our eyes open, and discuss it regularly, but are mostly too drunk and lazy to bother stumbling out the way and are just watching the whole affair with a mild disinterest, wondering if it will get so bad that we can't get a decent curry anymore. We suspect that it will be a crap totalitarian state anyway. One that regularly makes loud pronouncements about the things that are banned, but then leaves the only copy of the database of banned things on a bus somewhere in Croydon and doesn't know which department was supposed to be responsible. Your Michael Savage should try flying over here despite his ban. As long as he didn't tell the press that he was doing it, it would be highly unlikely that anybody at immigration would actually notice and many of the people working there are illegal immigrants themselves, so even if they did notice they would probably let him in anyway.
Welcome to Britain.
Permanently drunk since 1945.
He has the right to host his website, just like you have the right to host yours. If we take his off, then we have to take yours off. You are both operating under the same laws that protect both your opinions. The problem is this: If you succeed in your endeavor, you kill that right for all of us. You should let it go?
Please remember, your organization is more dangerous than his. If your organization succeeds then we all (including you) will suffer. Now my personal belief on the subjects that Michael Savage airs in his program is not the issue and it shouldn't be yours either, if it is your missing the point entirely. The issue here is who has the right to air the opinion and the answer is "we all do". Now if you take that right away from him, then you have taken the right from me to even send this email expressing my opinion.
So you asked me to do something so here it is. If you value your right to express your opinion about Michael, then you yourself should let go of your hatr
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