For the June edition of Playboy, contributing editor David Hochman had the unenviable task of spending more than 16 hours interviewing radio host Michael Savage. The result is nearly 6 full pages of inflammatory rants, xenophobic tirades and all-out Savage craziness.
Fortunately, Hochman called out Savage on some things. After Savage defended some of the homophobic comments he's made, saying “I've had gay friends all my life,” Hochman asked, “Isn't that the oldest line in the bigot's handbook?”
But Savage's comments about Glenn Beck are sure to garner the most attention:
SAVAGE: Glenn Beck is a laughingstock. The mark of the uneducated man? He has a blackboard; he plays professor half the time. What's with the chalk? He didn't go to college so he's making up for it by playing professor on television?
PLAYBOY: What's your biggest complaint about him?
SAVAGE: That he's fucking stupid. That's all. Other than that, nothing.
But there was plenty of contempt for his fellow talkers to go around. Take his comments on Bill O'Reilly:
I think O'Reilly is a phony. He has a background in entertainment. He's very smart. He has a good education and I give him that. He does a good job in his delivery, but he is very one-dimensional. It's either black or white with him, and there's no in between. Also, O'Reilly failed at radio, which shows you how hard this is to do.
And here are Savage's thoughts on Rush Limbaugh:
I don't know how Rush Limbaugh has an audience. I just don't know. I don't like anyone who was a water carrier for Bush all those years and now pretends he wasn't. I know he was deeply enmeshed in the Republican Party and George Bush. I mean, he has a right to do that, but don't pretend you're not a mouthpiece for them.
Savage also called Rachel Maddow “physically unappealing,” Keith Olbermann “brain-damaged” and Chris Matthews “the fraud of frauds.”
Some other highlights from the interview:
- Savage on Obama:
[H]e's leading the country down the road of socialism and left-wing morass.
Do you realize Obama couldn't have been cleared to be his own Secret Service agent? As you know, to become an FBI or a Secret Service agent there's a very strict set of rules, one of which is based on your past associations. Let's forget the birthing issue. I won't go there. His association with Bill Ayers alone would have disqualified him. His association for 20 years in Reverend Wright's church, the Reverend Wright who said the government gave AIDS to the black man?
- Savage on immigration and health care:
Let's take California. Put a highway patrol officer in every hospital. And I'm sorry, no tickee, no washee. You're not a citizen, you can't get care. Of course, if it's catastrophic, such as an auto accident, you give them what they need. But you can't get care if you're not a citizen. I'm sorry; we can't do it anymore.
- Savage on Islam:
I'm very worried about the number of mosques being built, where they're being built, why they have to be so dominant. I'm also worried about what type of Islam is being promulgated in America today.
- Savage on autism:
Every goddamn thing a child does is now thrown into the autism spectrum. How is that possible? Where did this illness come from? There are children who are genuinely autistic but not to the extent the medical establishment has claimed. The same with ADD and ADHD. A kid whines and the medical-pharmaceutical establishment says, “Medicate, medicate. Treat, treat. Your child is sick, poor baby.” These kids aren't sick! It's the system that's sick.
- Savage on gay marriage:
[T]he children are being proselytized. If gay marriage becomes legal, the children see this and they get a false sense of what marriage is.
Of course, regular listeners of Savage get treated to an endless supply of this on a daily basis and get to hear it in what he refers to in the Playboy interview as his “cantor's voice.” Have sweeter songs ever been sung?