Gossip: Michael Savage’s grim worldview

Michael Savage lives in a dark, apocalyptic world, says Kelefa Sanneh in The New Yorker. “Twenty-one hours a day I live in misery,” says the vitriolic talk-radio host, who has a weekly audience of 8 million people. “Three hours a day I’m happy.” Yet during those three hours on the air, Savage’s dire worldview is on full display. A casual remark about Michael Vick’s dogfighting operation, for instance, inspires thoughts about dead dogs and “the old boxeroo, waiting at the end of the road for all of us.” Savage will bring up global warming—which he calls “global bull”—and end up fretting over the inevitable fate of salmon: “It’s gotta swim all the way back, three years later, so it can shoot its sperm on the egg and die. What a way to live!” Before his broadcast career, Savage wrote books about alternative medicine, so he appreciates the fragility of the body. He won’t wear headphones because he’s afraid of going deaf, and at 67, he thinks he’s going blind. “I feel as though, almost, I’m losing my sight from looking every day at such horror. I feel as though my eyes are closing on me, because they don’t want to see it anymore.” Since liberals view him with such revulsion (“I have to watch out for them, because they’re all psychopaths”), Savage operates from what he calls several “hidden locations.” One of them overlooks San Francisco Bay, within sight of a Chevron refinery. “If a terrorist blew it up, it’d be the equivalent of 10 nuclear bombs. I sometimes sit here and think about the fireball.”

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up