In this week's issue, Hendrik Hertzberg takes aim at the GOP Noise Machine, examining the “lies and fantasies” being hatched about Obama; the “lunatic paranoia” being smeared around.

Hertzberg notes [emphasis added]:

The protesters do not look to politicians for leadership. They look to niche media figures like Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Glenn Beck, Michael Savage, and their scores of clones behind local and national microphones. Because these figures have no responsibilities, they cannot disappoint. Their sneers may be false and hateful—they all routinely liken the President and the “Democrat Party” to murderous totalitarians—but they are employed by large, nominally respectable corporations and supported by national advertisers, lending them a considerable measure of institutional prestige

I'm glad Hertzberg included Savage in his list of hate-mongerers, since it was a just a few weeks ago that The New Yorker, in a massive bout of misjudgment, published a long, flattering profile of Savage that actually did its best to prop the hate taker as some sort of misunderstood intellectual; “a marvelous storyteller, a quirky talker, and an incorrigible free-associater.”

Hertzberg, thankfully, returns some common sense to The New Yorker's coverage of Savage.