Just when I didn't think that sexism could regress more into petulant adolescent territory, Dr. Michael "Waa-Waa" Weiner, AKA, Michael Savage demonstrates how puerile a man in his sixties can appear when intimidated. Who knew the fountain of youth existed? Whatever is in Savage's aquifer preserves one's emotional and intellectual capability at about age 14 or earlier. Imagine the resentment that must stir in a patriarchal cockadoodle such as Savage who crows as if he's tough and macho even as he nears retirement age and wisdom evades him. How threatening to a throwback the new women's radio network, Greenstone Media, must be. Listen to Waa-Waa's seething sexist rhetoric courtesy Media Matters. You can almost hear Mikey's inner angry juvenile voice crack an octave in the transcript:
SAVAGE: You're listening to The Savage Nation. You're listening to [Jane] "Barbarella" Fonda, who's created a new radio network for women. Here is a girl who's learned nothing in 30 to 40 years, in the last 30 to 40 years. Here's [an] idiot who says that because 85 percent of general managers in radio are men, women don't listen. And she says in order to know how to program for your audience, you need to put women in there.Let me pause for a moment. A 60-something woman such as Jane Fonda no longer qualifies as a girl, particularly in the context of the extraordinary struggles Ms. Fonda has had to overcome. But Mikey's mind, stuck in a 1950s Twilight Zone adolescence, trivializes maturity and denigrates powerful females especially women who threaten his turf. His 1968 Barbarella reference hints at his backward irrelevant thinking about Jane Fonda today and makes him sound like a plaintive toddler waddling around in wet diapers. But, because he can string together syllables that sound somewhat more sophisticated than a bedwetting tot, I'll up his mental age to between, um, 12 to 14. When I hear a 60-something man call a 60-something woman a girl, I figure he's a hopeless male chauvinist transported by infantile rage over women beyond his control. Waa. Now grow up. To quote a conservative favorite, high priestess of unbridled free market enterprise, Ayn Rand, "Change or perish."
On how to market to and program for the female audience, on who it is that learned nothing and who is the idiot, Savage denies his disowned shadow by projecting it onto Ms. Fonda. Savage, a male, broadcasts to a male-dominated audience. No big deal. But women catering to a female audience is somehow wrong in Waa-Waa's magical double-standard kingdom. Ever scrutinized the ratings for his show (PDF)? I dare you to find the word, female or women in the demographics. C'mon, all you ad buyers out there. You know how the game is played. Media publishes only demos that they want you to see. You never get the full truth about how fragmented into teensy-weeny splinters an audience composition really is unless your agency or company subscribes to ratings research and can slice and dice the demographics to evaluate exactly who you will reach with your ad investment. Advertisers complain about paying big bucks to hit a small target with a lot of waste. Right? Yeah, I know it's true. Having worked in advertising and marketing for 20+ years as an advertiser client, an ad agency executive, and a news media professional, I know the numbers shell game from all sides of the table. Ineffectively reaching an audience delivers bad news for most advertisers who desire to influence the actual buyers of their wares.
Maybe those actual buyers is what gored Savage's approaching obsolescent ox and made him wail his shrill misogynist strawman at Fonda. What's a primo demographic that advertisers covet? Women. Women control 80 t0 85% of household purchases, transact trillions of dollars in sales, and account for most of the buying decisions for so many advertiser products and services that, by Juno, I do believe Fonda and her fellow board member, Gloria Steinem, are on to something big. Go google the stats on the clout of the female consumer and women business decision makers. They're quite impressive. So in the almighty arena of logic and reason--an area that males like Waa-Waa boast they're better at than women--Jane Fonda wins over the po' wittle Savage's irrational brain-jerk reaction. Advocating that women run a female-oriented radio network is just smart business, and in an industry dominated by male GMs, Greenstone will have no problem with the EEOC. I hope Fonda, Steinem, and Greenstone laugh with the rest of us women all the way to the bank. Ha!
For what it's worth on women and listening habits, personally I switched off my radio in 1990. I preferred my own tapes and CDs for my listening pleasure. I am not alone according to Greenstone Media's third-party research. But I have already tuned in to the women's radio network especially since I can download broadcasts via iTunes or stream it live on the Internet. Fonda proposes a good reason to again turn on the radio. OTOH, sexist hate speech, chimp howling, and circle jerk grunts are as boring, infantile, and regretfully as common as... *yawn* ...well, who needs it? Other brittle male egos frozen in a glacier from a time long, long ago perhaps do. Let them commiserate together. Buh-bye. Click. Buzz.
Of course, Savage didn't stop his "I hate women" tantrum with Jane Fonda. Next up, he waxed verklempt over female Democratic senators. Notice how he mentions no Republican females by name yet doesn't his vomit splat upon them as well?
I think I've heard this before. Weren't we told before Barbara Boxer became a U.S. senator, before Dianne Feinstein became a U.S. senator, before Hillary Clinton became a U.S. senator, that when women became senators, we'd have a kinder, gentler Senate, a more compassionate Senate? Well, I think the results are quite clear. The Senate is not kinder and gentler or more compassionate. In fact, it's more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because women have been injected into the Senate.Pardon me, dear readers, for the proverbial Bwahahahahaha! Ha! Savage can be such a clown, can't he? As he pulls a string of knotted fabricated hankies out of his ignorant wazoo, someone cue up the laugh track. Whew! What a load. OK, who injected these women into the Senate as if they were tasty sensations!? Who injected Bush-Cheney into the Oval Office? Who injected all those Republicans into Congress? Is there a secret injector button? Hmmm, maybe with Diebold, but in most parts of the USA, it's something called e-l-e-c-t-i-o-n-s. And I'm thinking the Senate has turned more vicious and more histrionic than ever, specifically because of Republicans. Yup. Ramped up about 1994 with the GOP takeover of the House and Newtie Poot's acrid pomposity, and then worsened when Democrats lost the Senate majority. Anyone remember the useless and embittered Clinton impeachment, plus the ruthless pursuit of Bill and Hillary via Ken Starr? Who led that event of hand-wringing melodrama and wasted mega-millions of taxpayer dollars? What kind of histrionics made men wet their boxers and briefs over Saddam's imaginary WMDs? Who also spearheaded the Iraq War killing tens of thousands of innocent civilians and who callously deflected the atrocities of Abu Ghraib as the acts of a few bad apples? To witness the kinder, gentler, compassionate side of Republican politics today, examine the National Republican Congressional Committee's dirt-digging campaign. WaPo reported last Sunday:
The National Republican Congressional Committee, which this year dispatched a half-dozen operatives to comb through tax, court and other records looking for damaging information on Democratic candidates, plans to spend more than 90 percent of its $50 million-plus advertising budget on what officials described as negative ads.
[...]
The memo recommended that vulnerable incumbents spend $20,000 on a research "package" to find damaging material about challengers and urged that they "define your opponent immediately and unrelentingly."
[...]
This will be a "very negative campaign and probably a more negative campaign than any in recent memory," Geer said.Sheesh. And Waa-Waa wants to specifically blame the lack of a kinder, gentler, and compassionate Senate on women--Democrats by name, and in general, Republican female senators included--as he totally disregards the ruthless dirty political tricks that mostly conservative men play. Waa. Waa. Waa.
For further evidence that Savage lacks mental capacity and emotional maturity, read his rant about putting Saddam back into power, an assertion made previously by another intellectual giant, Bill O'Reilly.
Bottom-line, if I could tell Savage about my support of the new women's radio network, Greenstone Media, and the significance of women in Congress, I would use language someone like him could comprehend....
Now, watch this drive.
UPDATE: Keith Olbermann of MSNBC's Countdown concurs. He picked Michael Savage as runner-up for his nightly "Worst Person in the World." Olbermann:
Our runner-up, Michael Savage. Wagged that cheap wig of his and announced that the U.S. Senate is now, quote, "more vicious and more histrionic then ever, specifically because women have been injected into it." Bulletin to Mr. Weiner Savage, there have been women in the U.S. Senate since 1922. Not that you'd need to know stuff like that or anything.UPDATE II: Savage has totally gone off his meds. Rosie O'Donnell is a lesbian fascist who deserves to be spat upon for hating the Church, part of some homosexual mafia conspiracy ...waa, waa, waa, harumph... the supremacy of white male viciousness, and nuke Iran.
Seriously, someone take him to see a psychoanalyst.
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