On the May 18 nationally syndicated radio show Savage Nation, host Michael Savage took shots at Media Matters for America President and CEO David Brock, who is openly gay. Referring to David Brock as “David Broken” and “David Brockstein,” Savage played clips from Brock's May 18 appearance on NBC's Today show and made comments in response, including: “Turn it off, I don't like his voice, I don't like the lisp. ... I don't like guys who sound like that they give me the creeps” and "[Y]our voice sucks. People don't listen to guys with voices like that no matter what their politics are. You gotta have a pair of balls!" Savage hosted a short-lived televised version of his show for MSNBC, also called The Savage Nation, before being fired by the cable channel for referring on the air to a caller as a “sodomite” and saying that the caller should “get AIDS and die.”
From the May 18 Savage Nation:
SAVAGE: We have -- I don't know who this guy is, David Broken, or David Brockstein, David Brock -- talking about right-wing media. Let's hear clip two.
CLIP OF BROCK FROM TODAY: It was doing the research on the Hillary Clinton book. I could start to see through the Republican attack machine. In other words, I saw all the lies that were being propagated. The Right Wing was going crazy in the mid-1990's with Clinton.
SAVAGE: Turn it off, I don't like his voice, I don't like the lisp. I don't like the innuendo; I don't like guys who sound like that they give me the creeps. I don't trust 'em, that's all. Play clip three; see if it gets any better.
CLIP OF BROCK FROM TODAY: I've also started an organization, as you know, which launched two weeks ago. Which posts now every day.
SAVAGE: Oh well your mommy must be very proud of you -- turn him off. Oh I started a website two weeks ago -- you're so self-righteous. It's all about your website isn't it -- but you don't have a radio show, do you? [Brock's 30-minute radio segment "We Will Brock You" airs on the Air America Radio program The O'Franken Factor every Wednesday at 1 p.m.] And you're never going to have one, because your voice sucks. People don't listen to guys with voices like that no matter what their politics are. You gotta have a pair of balls! That's what they wanna hear. Left or Right, you've gotta have a voice that roars like a lion, bubala. I hear their Aunt Sarah, they could tune in on -- they can call the Bronx, instead of this garbage. Too late for all of this.
According to an article by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)'s senior analyst, Steve Rendall, in the July/August 2003 issue of FAIR's Extra! magazine, “Savage likes to single out progressives with Jewish-sounding names and ridicule them with an exaggerated Brooklyn accent. Thus Rebekah Wolf of the People's Law Collective and Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union were mocked as 'Communist lawyers' (pronounced 'loy-yahs') and 'verminous, left-wing garbage ... with law degrees' (1/9/03). Savage has even invented a fictional ACLU whipping boy, a 'loy-yah' tellingly named 'Mark Nobodyberg.'”
The FAIR report also noted: “Savage was born Michael Weiner into a Jewish family in the Bronx, New York, in the 1940s. Savage adopted his new name when he began hosting his first radio show in 1994. On-air and elsewhere, 'his Jewish upbringing is strictly taboo,' reported Salon.com writer David Gilson in a March profile (3/5/03)."
David Brock's surname is Irish, and he was raised Roman Catholic.