Michael Savage is off his rocker

I'm much more comfortable listening to conservative Republicans discuss foreign policy and Israel than election-year politics and Democrats. Since the Republican National Convention, Michael Savage (born Michael Weiner) just makes me want to yell at the radio. (No chance to get through on the phone. Yelling at the radio works almost as well.) On Sept. 2, he wanted McCain to dump Gov. Palin in favor of Gov. Romney, like Romney was some sort of conservative savior. Yeah, right. Savage intimated a conspiracy that derailed Romney's campaign, when the fact was most Republican voters didn't like him all that much. He thought McCain-Romney was a dream ticket. Right. It's so awesome when the president can't stand the vice-president. Works all the time! Obama-Biden wouldn't have needed to produce new tv ads. The campaign simply could have used Romney's series of ads that he ran in Iowa and New Hampshire against McCain.

He kept harping on Bristol Palin's pregnancy. I heard a caller chime in, saying the Republican Party was now the party of unwed teenagers. Nice. If any voters are voting for McCain because Bristol Palin is pregnant: shame on them. She's keeping the baby! Oh, so terrible! I don't care whether Gov. Palin warned the campaign about Bristol's pregnancy or not. It shouldn't matter.

Later, after he was finished bashing Gov. Sarah Palin, Savage did a show suggesting Obama has an Oedipus complex. (For those of you who didn't have Greek tragedy or Freud in school: that means he is suggesting Obama has sexual feelings for his mom.) Disgusting. Beneath the dignity of a radio talk show host. And then the next day, instead of backing off, he said he thought it was one of his best shows ever. Great. The best show ever is the one sending independents back to the soft-rock station and Obama.

For me, last week was the last straw. (Oh, I'll still listen. But I "don't approve of the job Michael Savage is doing as conservative talk show host.") On most talk radio shows, each segment or topic lasts about an hour. Savage spent at least two hours last week talking to the guy who runs obamacrimes.com about the possibility Obama is a naturalized U.S. citizen and therefore ineligible to be president. Savage took to calling Obama a "foreigner," which is not what "naturalized citizen" means, even if it does refer to Obama. A caller correctly pointed out that anyone born to at least one American parent, regardless of birth location, is a "natural-born" citizen, not a naturalized citizen. The guest replied that in 1961, the year of Obama's birth, the law at the time was that a baby born abroad had to be naturalized. I find that hard to believe as that would seem to go against the U.S. Constitution. I figured the guy for a quack despite his website's 59 million hits (according to him). Is this the desperation level, I wondered, that some in the Republican camp have descended? (Not the McCain campaign, thank G-d.) Savage is an intelligent guy, with a doctorate in botany (?--whose team does he play for? not that there's anything wrong with that), and the author of 25 books, as he likes to remind us. He should have dismissed this guy out of hand.

And that's exactly what Charles Johnson did. Johnson is the blogger of littlegreenfootballs.com, one of my favorite blogs. It is staunchly pro-Israel, anti-Islamofascist terrorism, and as a result unabashedly pro-Republican. (Johnson is not Jewish.) In 2006, Johnson broke the story of a Reuters photographer doctoring images of Israeli military action to make them appear more lethal. The photographer was subsequently fired by Reuters, and the syndicate reviewed all his photographs for accuracy. Last week I saw a note from Johnson in the blog that said under no circumstances would he permit posts relating to Obama's birth certificate. I'll take Johnson's judgment over Savage's any day.

The birth certificate flap puts Savage's credibility into question, not Obama's. Savage could be appealing to independent voters to vote for McCain by discussing Arab-Muslim Islamofascist terrorism, or the massive new government spending progammes Obama is planning, or how Obama has waffled and flip-flopped on the right to bear arms. Instead, he wants to discuss whether Obama is eligible for the White House. Against a senator born in Panama. I'm going to relabel my station preset for the Savage Nation (WIND-AM 560) as "ridiculous."