For something like this, I will mention that douchebag Michael Savage

As a rule, I don't waste electrons on that pulsating hemorrhoid Michael Savage - but when Jello Biafra calls him a low-class punk after he tastelessly used a Dead Kennedy's song on his radio show to gleefully gloat about Ted Kennedy's brain tumor, I'll pass it on. (h/t to The Phoenix)

I haven't read the details yet, but I'm aware of what Michael Savage did. Obviously he took my song way the hell out of context and did it deliberately. But the bigger issue is Savage himself and how the hell he gets away with stuff like saying this, and saying that people with AIDS should be put in concentration camps. And then when people protest at the station, he calls on his own listeners to come down and beat them up.

It scares the shit out of me that the most popular radio talk-show hosts are all foaming-at-the-mouth, ultra-bigoted blabbermongers whom only North Korea or the Nazis could love.

But like it or not, Savage is the third-most popular radio-talk show host in this country behind Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity. Nobody from the other side is represented or promoted well enough by the big right-wing-owned radio networks to compete. That's one of the ways they mindfuck the country into being so dumb they vote for people like George Bush, Mitt Romney and Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The real issue here is why aren't the big candidates calling for media reform? Once upon a time there was a law on the books called the Fairness Doctrine, and it said that if somebody like Savage or Limbaugh or that skull woman Ann Coulter said something completely fucked up and dishonest on the air, somebody else was allowed to come on the air and reply to them without being told to shut up every 15 seconds by a power clown like Bill O'Reilly. That law was on the books for 50 years but was allowed to expire in the late '80s when a Democratic-controlled congress failed to override President Reagan's veto of the law.

The damage was further compounded when your friend and mine Bill Clinton rammed through the Telecommunications Act of 1996, further deregulating how many radio stations and media outlets one corporation can own and what they can do with them and they greenlighted their long-held agenda to throw public interest out the window. And the volume and impact of the Rush Limbaughs and Michael Savages multiplied exponentially with nobody on the other side being allowed to reply. In large areas of rural and small town America, this is the only radio anyone is exposed to. That's the problem. We need to bring back the Fairness Doctrine. John Kerry had a golden opportunity to fire back at the Swift Boat liars and use that as a platform to rally the public to demand media reform. But true to form, he was too chickenshit to do it.

Well said, Jello. That sort of powerful and informed statement is why I've had a crush on him since about 1980, by the way.

I've only been saying this for two years...

And the polls have been saying it for a year.

The military - and just as importantly, military families - are sick of the war in Iraq. When you consider that every Soldier, Sailor, Airman and Marine has somewhere between four and ten first degree relatives, that becomes a sizable constituency. A poll of active duty military and their families, conducted by Bloomberg and the LA Times from November 30 to December 3 reported that only 36% support the war and the administrations handling of it. In 2004, that number was 64%. The population in general exhibits 32% support, so the military is more in line with the people than with the president. Remember, the oath is to the Constitution. The president is not mentioned. (Unless you apply a liberal interpretation to the part about domestic enemies.)

In their own words:

Kent Fletcher, an Iraq war veteran, says he enthusiastically voted for President George W. Bush in 2000 and 2004. Now, he is a registered Democrat who questions the need for the war, the way it has been managed and the treatment of returning veterans.

``Saddam Hussein wasn't a threat and the culmination of my career was that war and it wasn't necessary,'' says Fletcher, 32, a financial analyst in Bluffton, South Carolina, who served almost 10 years as an officer in the U.S. Marine Corps.

[snip]

In 2005, Fletcher, the Marine who switched party affiliations, published an editorial in the Huntington, West Virginia Herald-Dispatch newspaper scolding critics of Bush, who he said were also insulting the U.S. fighting forces.

``You don't have to spit on an Iraqi war veteran physically to spit on one metaphorically,'' he wrote. ``We are part and the same with the president's administration.''

Fletcher is now a member of Votevets.org, a group that promotes political candidates, particularly veterans who are critical of the Bush administration's Iraq war policies.

That shift in Fletcher's view may reflect a broader trend in the military about dissent. The Bloomberg/Los Angeles Times poll finds that 58 percent of military families -- the same margin as the overall population -- believe it is appropriate for retired military personnel to criticize Bush even in a time of war.

These negative feelings are not dissipated in the least when they look around and see veterans being denied the care they need, or wounded soldiers asked to return portions of their enlistment bonuses when they are unable to fulfill their service contracts. They are not heartened when 12 month tours become 15 month tours, they aren't happy about serving with 20% waivered troops. They don't like being called "phony soldiers" by some redneck junkie who dodged the draft by virtue of a pimple on his ass, and they really don't think much of a Senate Minority leader who dismisses casualties in aWol's clusterfuck with a glib "Nobody is happy about losing lives but remember these are not draftees, these are full-time professional soldiers."

I would like to point out that that bastard Mitch McConnell said those callous and thoughtless words at a time when Ft. Campbell (which is in his state) lost three soldiers in a bomb attack the previous day.

And as the tide turns and the military shifts their support, the Wurlitzer is cranking up to spew forth the dolchstosslegende. The farther out on the lunatic fringe, the more vehement they become. Rush Limbaugh and the Phony Soldiers crack...Michael Savage calling retired General Kerr a "Phony General" and an "old queen" and casting aspersions on all G.I.'s in the process. "Now you wonder why we're still in Iraq five years later. General Keith Kerr. He wasn't just racking up cue balls at the pool table," Savage ranted hysterically.

At this point they are flailing wildly. Their day is done and they know it, but they are desperately trying to reanimate the monster for one last go at the village. In their desperation they spew venom and hatred, and instead of shoring up support, they drive support away.

That is why I propose we take them out of their AM radio ghetto and put them on prime time for the duration of the writers strike.

Let the rest of the country have a taste of the Kool-Aid that the 24%-ers are swilling, and see if the fuckers have any sponsors left two weeks in.