He was a big cigar smoker. We would go and visit; I had a very good time. He would gloat with the cigar and lord it over my father. We’d leave. My father never said anything against him, but you know, I could see in his eyes that he was a little, let’s say, that he lost that little battle at that time. You know how humans are—they’re competitive! Even if they love their friend, if their friend does better than them, there’s a degree of envy in every human being. It’s just one of the cardinal sins.
As years went on, the man’s business continued to thrive. Then I left home and moved away from NYC. I went and did my thing collecting plants, working for my graduate degrees thousands of miles away—I was living six thousand miles away, then nine thousand, in the Fiji Islands. Lo and behold, on one of my trips back to New York, when I was already a father myself, I heard that this man’s leather business had collapsed entirely. The fad that he rode like a wave died. People were no longer buying that particular product, and the man who had a chain of successful wholesale stores lost everything.
He lost everything, and it was so fast that he wound up living where he started: on the Lower East Side of New York in a poor relative’s apartment, with his wife and the relative’s family—back where he started in a one-room apartment. And that’s where I come in.
I came back from one of my trips to the Fiji Islands. I was a young man—I don’t remember how old I was; maybe thirty-five to forty. My father was dead, and here sits the leather man. Now, remember, I loved him like another father. I loved all my father’s friends. You know how it is when you’re a kid in a very close-knit community: You tend to love the people like they’re your own. We all grew up so close together, and there was never a bad word between him and my father.
He sat there, shrunken up in the chair in my parents’ living room, after he’d lost everything. He looked up at me, still smoking a cigar, and practically pleaded, “Michael, Michael, look what happened to me. Look what happened to me.” His eyes were wandering left and right. He didn’t understand what happened to him. He said, “I’d rather have cancer than what God did to me.”
I soon left New York again. I went back to do what I did, which was to collect plants, and lo and behold, I heard that two years later he died from one of the most rapidly invasive forms of brain cancer.
Be careful what you say: God hears the truth but waits.
Thirty-Six
From Immigrant’s Son to Radio Stardom
MY FATHER WAS AN IMMIGRANT. HE CAME HERE WHEN HE was seven. He was not born here, but I was born here. He was a citizen when I was born. I’m not an anchor baby—don’t get me wrong—but I do have one foot in the Old World and one foot in the New World, so I really speak from a knowledgeable position about it. I understand what it’s like to live in a poor household with many people. Trust me, we lived in such a place—I didn’t even have my own bedroom in the Bronx. There was one bedroom and a tiny living room with a fake fireplace. I remember hanging stockings on the fake fireplace: I thought Santa would give me a gift.
So, part in the Old World, part in the New World. My grandmother didn’t speak a word of English in the house. She spoke the old language from the old country. She was so wonderful! Boy, did I love her. She was so beautiful, very stoic—very, very Russian, this woman. She spoke to me in Russian by the way. I am not a Russian-language speaker, but it’s strange: I can understand the language to a certain extent. It’s a very hard language for an American to learn. The alphabet is very complicated for an English speaker. I can surely imagine how hard it is for a Spanish speaker to learn English, by the way. English is a tough language, very tough!
But, in my home, my parents spoke only English. To make a long story short, here I am, a “man-child in the Promised Land.” When my turn came to assume my position in this country in my chosen profession, they said, “White men need not apply.” The positions were closed. So, you can understand where I am coming from. I got so angry that I produced a virgin demo in 1993 and sent it out to about 220 radio stations. I got a return from about five to ten of them. Five of them said, “That’s really good stuff. Would you like to work at our station?” I remember, to this day: One of them was in Boston of all places. I don’t remember the stations that said, “We like what you did,” but, nevertheless, I was living in San Francisco as I am now and one of the offers came from a local station. The guy said to me, “Good stuff. Would you like to come on in and talk to us?”
Here’s what the virgin demo said, from 1993:
And now, direct from the towers above Manhattan, it’s “The Michael Savage Show.” To the right of Rush and to the left of God, and now—Michael Savage.
I’m glad I can be with you seven nights a week because these stories are just not going away. I mean, every day in every way we’re getting assaulted. Look at these questions before us today. Look at the questions before us! You know they say that I’m to the right of Rush and to the left of God. Do immigrants carry diseases? Are lawyers really humans?
All right, let’s pause. You see how daring this was? You say, “Well, it’s commonplace today,” but it was not commonplace in the early nineties; it was really daring. It broke open new ground. I changed the media landscape! That’s it; that’s how I started.
Then I did a show—I’ll never forget it. I blew through it because I was under the weather. I’ll never forget it: The local station manager called me and said, “Would you like to fill in?”
I said, “Sure, I’ll try it.” Now, I had never done radio except on book tours. I had done ten national book tours, where you go around and do radio and television. They were very stressful. Along the way I remember various program directors saying to me, “You know, you’re really good on the radio. You should consider a career in radio.” How could you get a job in radio? It was as real to me as becoming an astronaut. Of course I wanted to do it, but I didn’t know how to get into radio.
But let me tell you something: Desperation breeds creativity and creativity breeds a lot of opportunity. I think that fate had a hand in it; this, and God. I really think I was set out to do this from the beginning! All right, so he says, “fill in.” The first show I filled in for was on a liberal talk station in San Francisco—it’s still there. It’s a powerhouse 50,000 watt-er. He gives me a show to fill in for. The guy who hosts the overnight show and is a hater—hates white people, let’s say, like Obama’s pastor. Exactly, a Reverend Wright! All night long, hate radio: against whites, against America. He himself, of course, is living the high life—as is Reverend Wright in his new $10 million house. You understand how it works. Curse America and laugh all the way to the bank, you know.
So, that’s the kind of show I filled in on! I never listened to the creep and I’m never up in the middle of the night. So, I go on the air and I start to talk about illegal immigrants. Soon the hate callers began. I was overwhelmed because, remember what my last incarnation was? I was the good doctor, the nutritionist and the herbalist who gave lectures around the world!
Normally, I would give lectures about health and vitamins and nutrition in America. At one point, I was director of nutrition for a major international nutrition company. They sent me to Malaysia to talk about their products. My audience was all Muslim women, and they were a great audience. These were moderate Muslim women who were interested in nutritional supplements. They received it very well. I spoke and it was translated.
So, I had been all over the world doing lectures and I was usually very well received. Frankly, I was like the “beloved doctor”—that kind of thing. Now I do talk radio and I walk into a propeller of hatred from the Left. I never encountered such hatred from the people, from the regular listeners of this guy’s show! That night, when the shift ended (from midnight to five A.M.), I drive home from that station. The whole way home I’m in a paranoid state. I’m looking in the rearview mirror—I thought I was being followed! I get home. I say to my wife when I get home, when she wakes up, “I’m never going to do radio as long as I live. I
can’t take the hatred of the callers! The liberals are the most hateful people I’ve ever encountered in the world. No amount of money would be worth doing this!”
The station called me the next day when I woke up. They said, “Wow, you did a great job, Savage! Would you like to fill in again?”
I said, “No, I will never fill in again as long as I live. I don’t ever want to do radio again.” Ask them! I’m not making it up!
“Why?”
“I’m not going to go into a show again with these haters.”
“Well, how about filling in during the day?”
I said, “I don’t know. I don’t think I could do radio: It’s too hateful. The people who call are full of hate, the Left-wingers.”
So they said, “Tell you what: You won’t have to do the night shift again. You’ll do a day shift.”
I did a little fill-in on the day, and I shook up the whole local media. Then eventually they created a local conservative station and I went on that. They made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. Remember, I was making a fairly good living as an author and consultant. I didn’t want anything to do with radio, but the temptation was too great.
I’ve got to tell you something else. Radio—you ask anyone in the media who knows how to do it right, and they’ll all tell you the same thing: Nothing in the world of media could compare to the high you get off radio. There’s nothing that can compare to the feelings you get! When you do this right, there’s no performance in the world that equals radio.
Thirty-Seven
The Death of Pets: Snowy Story
THIS IS NOT ABOUT TEDDY, MY CURRENT DOG, BUT MY LAST dog, Snowy the Border collie. She was sixteen years old. For years I called Snowy “my little angel with fur.” I even wrote a poem to her. As she became quite feeble, I couldn’t take care of her. People said, “Well, euthanize her,” but I said, “No, she’s not ready for death.” We found some good, kind folks up near the Russian River who took her in, and she had three more beautiful years. She got better living on their little farm. She became the queen of the other dogs—they loved her! Well, as she became very sick, we went up to see her; took a long, silent ride. When we got there she was lying in the grass, and her eyes were glazed over. She was very thin. It was very sad.
What can I say to you? She was a big part of my life. I love the dog, but she didn’t die. I whistled to her and talked to her and said, “Come on, let’s go for a run.” As she lay there, she tried to run, but her feet moved only slightly.
Snowy didn’t die on Saturday. She just lay there breathing heavily, and then we took her in the house. I didn’t know what to do with her, but she was very peaceful. When I left her in the house, the little place where she lived, I said, “You know, we should all be so lucky as to lie down in the grass in the cool shade, surrounded by people who love us, when it’s the end of our lives.” It’s a part of the cycle of life.
Thirty-Eight
When Pasta Was Spaghetti
I FOUND “WHEN PASTA WAS SPAGHETTI” IN MY ARCHIVES. It was written—let’s see—“Michael Savage, August 1985, written in a lightning storm at 40,000 feet over Cheyenne, Wyoming.” When I thought the plane was going to crash, I wrote “When Pasta Was Spaghetti.” So, you liberals get ready to sneer; and you sane people, get ready to enjoy it because it’s a wonderful poem.
The hairy forearms of New York serve you your coffee with a turning gesture, an offering that says, “Drink, eat, enjoy”: The wiry Italian in Vincent’s Clam Bar, the one behind the greased-over register; the young kid connected, the one who receives his deference from the spaghetti cook, older than his gangster father; the spaghetti cook who looks like an old-fashioned doctor from the Bronx, with clipped mustache. He actually pulls some noodles out of the pot and eats them as they cook, looking to the grimy ceiling for his tender answer. Well, they used to call it “spaghetti.” Now it’s “pasta” at ten dollars a plate. The smoky windows of Romeo’s Spaghetti now offer radios and knickknacks. It was fifty cents a plate then. In neon letters that you couldn’t miss, even through a fogged-over window on a cold winter’s eve, there was life: marinara sauce that stuck to the seat; noodles as long as your young arm; meatballs as fluffy as your dreams of them; bread on the table that you’d eat against your parents’ admonition that “the meal was a-coming, the meal was a-coming.” And men, some burly with black hairy forearms, whose smiles scared you. And little skinny guys with the look of murder on their faces, and people who slurped their spaghetti straight to their mouths from the plate, in one motion like Chinese shoveling rice in the mouth with clicking sticks. That was gusto before it became a beer ad. That was taste before it became a synonym for fashion. That was spaghetti before it became pasta.
Thirty-Nine
Separate Bedrooms
I READ A STORY ONCE ABOUT THE NUMBER OF MARRIED couples in the United States that choose to sleep in separate bedrooms. A survey showed that this trend is increasingly popular because of marital tension and disturbances in sleep as a result of sharing a bedroom. They’re not calling it a separate bedroom, because the people are embarrassed to admit it. They call it a “flex suite” instead, to avoid any embarrassment.
Let me tell you a little secret about that: It’s only poor couples who sleep in the same bed for their whole lives, generally. Not everybody, don’t get me wrong. But generally it’s a mark of poverty to have to share a bed with someone your whole life.
The fact of the matter is, if you study the history of this—let’s start with royalty. They never shared the same bedroom, never mind the same bed! We’re not talking about in the beginning phases, when they were in the ninety days of marital heat—that’s an understood fact. The ninety-day period is over after ninety, ninety-one days according to every study that’s ever been done. Ninety days of insanity, then by ninety-one days, it’s already over. It goes on to a certain extent, but after ninety days you have to live with this person.
So, first it starts out as twin beds in the same room, very close to each other, with a little nightstand. Then it’s not so much twin beds—you get the bigger beds in the same room. Then if you have a little money . . . That’s how it works; that’s the fact of the matter. There’s no shame in it! You can still get together when you want, but you have two different lives, two different minds. Why do you have to share every second in the bedroom? What, that’s some sacred place to be together? The way people are today, individually, they don’t want to be in the same room—and, by the way, this is not limited to America. I’ll give you an example, an anthropological experience about men and women.
In Fiji—let’s go back to the years I was living in Fiji, in the village. This is a delicate subject. The men had a men’s house and the women had a women’s house. When a woman went through her monthly cycles, she went into the women’s house with the other women. The men didn’t want to be around them during that time! Now, what does that make the men in Fiji? Does it make them sexist? Does it make them whatever “ist” you want to call it? They knew, from their culture, that they didn’t want to be around the women at that time, for whatever the reasons were. And I got news for you: The women would rather be with their friends at that time, too! So, the guys went over with their friends in their separate house, they all hung out, slept in the same big straw hut—and the women slept together! That’s how they did it in Fiji. I’m giving you one example.
So, this whole idea of how to raise a child—or how to live with a woman or, for a woman, how to live with a man—there’s no set rules in this area. A lot of what we see going on today is devolution, not evolution. The people don’t even actually understand how to live with each other or how to raise children. And what they always do is try an extremely tolerant methodology: People think that by going with liberal social mores it’s going to work, and it often doesn’t.
What you have to do is go back to the traditional methods of raising children and the traditional methods of living in the same household—man and woman, woman and man.
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br /> Forty
Political Museums and the Downfall of Western Culture
QUESTION IS THIS: DO YOU STILL GO TO MUSEUMS OR HAVE museums become “museums” in the U.S.A.? I used to live in museums. Because I grew up in my dad’s antiques store looking at art, I spent a lot of time in museums—I always have. I stopped going years ago, though, when the AIDS racketeers started dominating San Francisco’s collections and turned everything in museums into a sort of “plea” for a special subpopulation of the American people. I couldn’t take it anymore, so I stopped going.
Too many exhibits have become propaganda, not art. They put a basket from Guatemala next to a Rembrandt and they tell you they’re culturally equal! Nevertheless, the European collections are still there—and they still stand out, and they are still worth going to see.
So, let me begin at the end: I recently went to the de Young and came out feeling enlightened. I use the word “enlightened” in the way it truly was written and meant to be understood: I felt lighter inside. My spirit was lifted from association with great art. I stood nose to nose with Hopper and Church and other great artists—you know, our sight an inch from the oil paint is an astonishing thing to behold. You can literally feel the movements of the brush. It does something to your mind that you can’t compare with anything else—certainly not television or a movie.
So, I saw some of my favorite old paintings. They were amazingly fabulous. I just love the intelligent, young families with young children; sadly, they’re mainly Europeans. There are very few American families; it’s mainly French families that still take their young children to the museums, as I did my children.
Yenta is a term in American slang denoting a “busybody.” There was an exhibit in the museum that was just breathtakingly, frighteningly hard to believe it was in a museum, about this San Francisco–native yenta with good taste in fashion. When I saw this I thought, Now this can’t be. They can’t be doing this. But, yes, they were doing it. Here’s a woman I never heard of and her dresses were in showcases in the museum! But wait, it gets worse: There was a whole glass case devoted to this woman’s shoes. Her shoes! So, I stood there laughing out loud. People thought I was crazy! I said, “My God, it’s every yenta’s dream. There they are, the yenta’s shoes, under glass in a museum after she’s dead.”
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