Do you know who Michael Savage is?

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PLEASE NOTE: I WAS HAVING TROUBLE WITH THE LINK FOR THIS AUDIO, PLEASE LISTEN TO THE MICHAEL SAVAGE VIDEO THAT IS POSTED ABOVE THIS POST. :)

Before I begin my analysis of this piece of rhetoric that Michael Savage presents to the U.S., I think it is important to give some background on just how popular this man's rhetoric is. Michael Savage is a conservative Talk Radio host of the show Savage Nation. He is extremely high ranking in his popularity as according to Talkers Magazine he is ranked as number 4 for popularity and is ranked at number 2 on talkstreamlive.wordpress.com. To my surprise he is ranked just below Rush Limbaugh as he is number 1 according to both sites. If you have taken a look at the video I posted above and listened to the language he uses, his popularity may be as big of a concern to you as it is for me. Though I knew he had a wide following, I did not know that it has grown to this extent.


First I would like to discuss the insults that Savage uses against the woman he is critiquing as well as what he uses to describe people with liberal views or what he has coined as the "lunatic left". He begins by describing all people that have a liberal view in politics as, "anti-life, pro-terrorist...that die hard progressives  hate America, hate religion, hate the traditional family, and virtually hate life". As we (in our class know) this is not true, Savage states this as a fact. He says "we know" as in "I've told you before and this is our view of liberals". The "we" of course meaning the conservatives and himself and by using the term "we" he is linking himself with his listeners. He is maintaining common ground with them and is stating that they together share a habitus on the issue. Not only that they share it though, he reinforces their habitus and validates it.




His language does this because just as "The Resilient Earth" is "seeking to please and affirm the beliefs of a group already sure of its positions" (Brown and Herndl, 225), Savage is doing the same thing. He knows that he is not speaking for or to liberals, and will not change their minds. He is speaking to his own conservative marketplace because as he speaks his ideas/rhetoric, he puts value into the ideas of others that think like him, but he is speaking from an advantaged place. With him being a radio talk show host and with his many masters degrees, his audience sees him as "knowledgeable" and "creditable" and therefore a supporting and authoritative voice for them to confirm their views. His  and his listeners economy grows through the exchange of the same ideas as listeners can even call in to talk with him to exchange their views together. Therefore Savage is continually using the "strategy of condescension" because from his educational background he is able to speak or at least has experience with (take a look at his educational background) in another linguistic style that would allow him to discuss his views in a way that would not constantly diminish and demean the views and the identity of others that he does not agree with. Instead he chooses to use extremely blunt and crude language that his listeners or anyone can understand and speak with. Therefore he "builds a social link" (Brown and Herndl, 225) through this strategy. 


Not only is the fact that he uses such insulting language why his language is such b.s. but also because he uses no facts or sources to back up what he believes. He simply uses his own experience and his own thoughts to back himself up. He often provides the listener with his past experience of being a  liberal which to him (and to his audience) makes himself an expert on the way liberals are (which of course is not reality).


He also construes anything from the liberal side that he provides as his context for bringing any issue up. As in the piece I posted, he completely disregards the actual language that the woman uses when making her case. Notably, he never tells us her name, making it almost impossible to research anything she says otherwise on the environmental issue of conservation and reducing one's carbon footprint. Without providing any knowledge of what type of work she does, he reduces her to nothing else than someone he is able to mock as well as being nothing more than a "girl" (when she is clearly a woman), a "nut", "maniac", "ditz", "lunatic", "freak" and "broad". 


If it were important to Michael Savage and his listeners to understand what exactly she is saying, I think they would make the effort to look at her language more closely. It seems however, that if they did take a look at what she is actually saying their minds may change a little, but they are not looking for their minds to be changed but reinforced. This is why they listen to Michael Savage. Let's say they were looking to change their minds, then they may look at this woman's statement as I (and most of us) do. She states, "If you aren't sure about having kids think about the environmental implications."


Okay easy, she is stating that if you have not already had children and are thinking about keeping it that way or perhaps thinking that you want to, but helping the environment and keeping population down is also important to you, maybe that will sway you to not have children. This is all. No where does she state that children should be killed, women should have abortions, that people who have families are wrong, or any race is better than the other. She is simply asking people to think about it, to keep it in their conscious mind that they can help the environment by not reproducing.


However, Savage takes it to the extreme and blames her for advocating for Obama Care, and wanting to get rid of children who are already born. He invents his own rhetoric to describe what this woman is advocating for as "greengenics". Obviously a play off of eugenics as he states that environmentalists advocate to get ride of "native white people". Truly making people believe that white people are "native" to the land of the United States, when clearly and knowingly white people are not. He is making irrational arguments in order to make a point. He is bringing issues in that have nothing to do with the woman's argument, but people listen and people agree with him.


To you (the class) and I can see, Michael Savage does not use the proper tools to make an argument. He uses and focuses on arbitrary details and uses destructive and self righteous language to make himself and his listeners superior than the one they are refuting. 


How do we know Michael Savage is aiding in the the beliefs of others? Because his show is one of the top radio shows in the U.S. 


How do I know he has such an impact on people to use his views as a habitus? Because I've witnessed it in my parent's home. Savage's language has an immense amount of power behind it, so much that my mother has his radio show on in the kitchen, in the living room, in the bathroom and in her bedroom so that she can hear his words, listen to his language, maintain and justify her beliefs, to mirror his views because she sees him as a strong and knowledgeable man and to idealize what he has that she does not.  
What does he have? Numerous college degrees, a radio show, listeners, followers, authority over some form of the public, and most importantly manipulation of language. My mother has zero of these things and so looks to him for idealization of what a person should be. She believes that Michael Savage represents her as an individual as a way to let her views be spoken where she cannot speak them. His Facebook page is a haven for her to connect with people that listen to him and agree with his views. There she can communicate back and forth and take part within Savage's linguistic economy, find currency, and most importantly she is able to find her sense of self. Her self is reaffirmed in anything that Michael Savage provides for her. Essentially he is not what gave her initial world view, but as she as changed from a young rebellious liberal teenager into a hard-core conservative woman her world view has changed, and Michael Savage's language has become her "self object" (Brown and Herndl, 229).


I do not share this about my mother in order to mock her or to state her as lesser, but rather to show that rhetoric has immense power even when it may seem extreme and ridiculous to those who are able to look at language as discourse. It is to show that rhetoric does shape the reality in which some people live and that rhetoric can be taken into strong belief.