Some People are Idiots.

Okay, the first idiot I’d like to talk about this week is — who else? — Michael Savage.

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For those of you who don’t know, Michael Savage, a conservative radio talk-show host, recently made a series of somewhat incendiary remarks regarding children with autism last Wednesday. Accusing medical professionals and Big Pharma of creating what he called a “national panic” and over-diagnosing autism or autism spectrum disorders, Savage went on to say:

What do you mean they scream and they’re silent? They don’t have a father around to tell them, ‘Don’t act like a moron. You’ll get nowhere in life. Stop acting like a putz. Straighten up. Act like a man. Don’t sit there crying and screaming, you idiot.’

Yeah. That’s all that people like Daniel Tammet or people like this guy on a British public service announcement about autism needed: a daddy with a big mouth on him. I guess that must be the big secret that doctors and pharmaceutical companies and Rain Man are keeping from us all — good ole-fashioned parental discipline just like Back Then when they didn’t have autism. All I want to know is this: If that’s all it takes to cure autism, why the heck isn’t Jim Carrey stepping up to the plate and giving Jenny McCarthy’s kid a good man-swat in the ass?

According to Perez Hilton, whom I treasure because he soils himself with celebrity culture so the rest of us only have to read the digested version — really, I think of him as the shabbes goy of celebrity journalism — Michael Savage is experiencing an immediate and (dare I call it “savage”?) backlash from people who tend to think that autism might be a mite more tough to cure than by calling someone an idiot. Specifically, a seven-station network in Mississippi is dropping Savage Nation, Michael Savage’s radio show, and he’s losing the endorsement of AFLAC, an insurance company.

Good. Actually, I think Savage should experience much more retribution, but losing seven stations and AFLAC is a decent start.

Now, what I should always avoid doing when I go to Perez is looking at the comments, but they have the irresistible pull of an intellectual vacuum there so huge it qualifies as a quantum celeblog singularity, what with people basically posting that they’re “first” (Who cares?) or that Perez is fat (Uhhh…so?) or that they still want Hillary to win (HAHAHA!). However, some of the comments there were just so far beyond the pale that I had to respond somehow, somewhere.

How ’bout here?

“Jo” had a comment that was fairly representative:

Just because Savage said something that is shocking doesn’t mean he should be censored and taken off the air in specific markets. That is censorship plain and simple.
That is what the Chinese gov’t does. We should be able to take his comments for what they are worth, someone’s opinion, then choose to either continue to listen to him or choose another station.

Or “Jenni,” another poster, stated, “Whatever happened to freedom of speech?”

Jo, Jenni and any other slow-moving homunculus who thinks that Savage suffered any abrigement of his freedom of speech for his Wednesday diatribe, let me tell you about the First Amendment. Here’s what it says:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

You’ll notice that the first word says “Congress.” Like, the government.

In other words, freedom of speech is guaranteed in this country as a right that the government cannot abridge except in specific circumstances (i.e., the famous fire-in-a-crowded-theater example).

A MISSISSIPPI RADIO NETWORK IS NOT THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT. Get that?

When a Mississippi radio network finds a radio talk show host’s comments insulting and derogatory enough to fire him, this is called “free market in action,” not “infringement of First Amendment rights.” Somehow, Jo, Jenni, and a host of others have got it into their heads that any condemnation of another person’s comments or ideas or any reasonable consequences resulting from that person’s free speech constitutes — somehow — an abridgment of their First Amendment rights.

Wrong. That’s called a reasonable consequence for violating the common sense rule that “a closed mouth will gather no foot.” If you’re not sure, why don’t you just call your boss a rectal sphincter and see what happens?

When you’re fired, that won’t be an abridgement of your free speech rights either.

It’s also not censorship.

Censorship, according to this definition, “is the suppression of speech or deletion of communicative material which may be considered objectionable, harmful or sensitive, as determined by a censor. The rationale for censorship is different for various types of data censored. Censorship is the act or practice of removing material from things we encounter every day on the grounds that it is obscene, vulgar, and/or highly objectionable.”

Guess what? Savage wasn’t “censored.” His reactionary comments, on the other hand, were broadcast across the nation from sea to shining sea in their unfiltered trogloditism and repeated throughout various media outlets — again, with every precious, cretinous word completely intact. The closest Savage got to uttering a censorable obscenity under FCC rules — well, besides the obvious intellectual obscenity of declaring utterly without data of any kind that “99%” of autism cases are bullcrap — was the Yiddish word “putz,” which, although it literally means “penis,” was not censored by the FCC in any way.

Nope. Losing your job for opening your mouth does not equal “censorship.” It’s called “consequences.” See above about calling your boss a rectal sphincter.

As anyone who’s watched Spider-Man and understood it without Cliffs Notes can tell you, with power comes responsibility, and one consequence of possessing the power of freedom of speech is the concomitant responsibility for speech. That means that yes, you can say what you want. And if you do, you can be fired.

Added:  Courtesy of Media and Mayhem, I have a list of the advertisers who advertised on Savage’s show on Diss Autism Day:

Digital Media Inc., U.S.A.

Nevada State Corporate Network, Inc.

Roger Schlesinger, the Mortgage Minute Guy

Effectur

Geico

Home Depot

Wachovia

Gold Bond

FreshStart America

Heritage Foundation

Debt Consultants of America

DirectBuy

WebEx

~ by adsoofmelk on July 23, 2008.