Days after telling his listeners that the “radical homosexual agenda ... threaten[s] your very survival,” on the November 16 edition of his radio show, Michael Savage asserted that a “society that embraces homosexuality is a society that will not last much longer.” Savage then predicted his remarks would “wind up tomorrow in several of the blogs run by gays -- and they think only of that 'cause they're like drug addicts.” Later in the broadcast, Savage claimed, “There is not a mean bone in my body,” and concluded: “With God's will and your listenership, we shall nuke Iran.”
As Media Matters for America has noted (here, here, and here), Savage has often referred to “the homosexual mafia” and made other vitriolic attacks on gays. According to Talkers magazine, The Savage Nation is played on over 300 radio stations and reaches more than 8 million listeners each week, making it the third most-listened to radio talk show in the nation behind only The Rush Limbaugh Show and The Sean Hannity Show.
From the November 16 edition of Talk Radio Network's The Savage Nation:
SAVAGE: You don't have to think a certain way to call yourself a conservative. Try to use common sense in all of your thinking, and try to put a piece of humanity into all of your thinking, and try to put yourself in the place of the person who you are talking about before you come to a conclusion based upon what is supposedly a Republican principle.
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SAVAGE: I have said many things about many issues. When I said, the other day, for example -- and they went crazy in the media -- they keep bashing me now because I said that the homosexual mafia will not stop until we all bend our knees to the homosexual agenda. They couldn't stop quoting me. All of these guys, who are probably gay themselves, are shocked that somebody would actually say the truth.
Wherever I look, I see this going on, and I have an obligation to tell you how I see it. Now, what does that make me? A conservative or a liberal? If I tell you that the homosexual radicals -- you want call them that if you want -- the homosexual radicals, which are perhaps the most powerful group in the United States of America -- now, why do I say a thing like that? Let them type it up now and put it on the Internet.
Let's look at Hollywood. Who do you think controls what comes out of Hollywood? Do you think it's a married Catholic, who is straight and narrow? No, I don't think so. I think the purple hand is all over Hollywood. Take a look at the products that come out of Hollywood.
Take a look at the news. Rarely do you see anyone in the news business saying one word, that enough is enough; cut it out; we don't want to hear it anymore; we're sick of it; it goes against everything we believe in.
This cuts across all religious lines -- it doesn't matter whether you're Christian, Jewish, Muslim. It doesn't matter whether you're from America or abroad. We will tell you that 20,000 years of evolution, of societal evolution, has taught us the same thing: that a society that embraces homosexuality is a society that will not last much longer. Anybody who's studied history knows that.
So, why does that make me wrong for me to tell you this? Why do the people who are promoting this, this death-style, think that the people are that stupid? If you have children all you have to do is ask yourself one question on this issue and then I'm going to move on again because I'm kind of bored of that topic but I'm giving you an example. Is that a liberal or a conservative point of view on this issue of the gay issue? I mean, where do you stand on it? If you're liberal, you mean you have to support the homosexual agenda? I don't think so. In fact, I know so.
What you do in that case is you put common sense family values above both political systems and you ask yourself one question: If you have a son, would you rather your son is gay or straight? Would you rather your son get married and have children? If you have a daughter, would you rather that she become a lesbian or that she become -- excuse me -- that she gets married and have a family. Tell me what you'd rather -- how'd you answer that. Now, this is not to say that if you have a child who, at some point, tells you that they are not heterosexual that they're gay -- what are you going to do? You going to hate them? No, you can't hate them; they're your blood. You live with them.
I asked you a different question, though. I didn't tell you to hate gay people, did I? I told you to be aware of the homosexual agenda; how powerful the homosexual movement is in this country as witness the fact that you never hear any criticism of them. You see? So, now let's move on. I don't even want to talk about it. I'm giving it to you as an example, and I know it's going to wind up tomorrow in several of the blogs run by gays -- and they think only of that 'cause they're like drug addicts.
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SAVAGE: Because these people are sort of identical in philosophy to the liberals, they just have packaged it in a different way. So, when I talk about [former House Speaker] Newt Gingrich [R-GA] in the same breath as I talk about [Senate Democratic Leader] Harry Reid [NV] or [actor] Sean Penn, there's a good reason for it. And you really have to understand that I know what I'm talking about -- just look at the Political Zoo. And I mean it in good fun, you understand that. I do it in absolute -- because there's not a mean bone in my body.
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SAVAGE: She [Judith Regan] thinks that that's going to raise her up in the eyes of the public. Does that not tell you everything that she thinks -- that by saying that she was sitting with Howard Stern, we're going to think more of her. She doesn't even understand that we think less of him than we do of her and that now she has told us exactly what we need to know. With God's will and your listenership, we shall nuke Iran.