Radio spittle-spewer Michael Savage is an unhinged lunatic at best or a deeply cynical, craven opportunist at worst.
It’s really hard for me to get too worked up about Savage (who is actually, fittingly, a Wiener) being banned from entering the UK, but I have to concede that it not only violates free speech (though theres no such thing as that in Europe, or anywhere else in the world aside from the USA for that matter) but also has the side effect of actually raising that loon’s profile and giving him precisely the sort of attention he craves and has made a career upon.
This sucks. Free speech is hard. I’ve had to add the Savage Wiener to my list of unsavory persons to defend, which includes the likes of Varun Gandhi and Geert Wilders. I’ve also defended the publication of the Muhammad cartoons, the Jewel of Medina, and even hosted the irredeemably islamophobic videos Fitna and Obsession on my blog. sigh…
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Aziz, I do agree with you for the most part, but remember that the bar is set a little lower where it comes to allowing a person to enter a country.
The US has certainly turned away our fair share of people – Yusef Islam, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Farley Mowat, etc. I’d be outraged if any of these people had been forbidden or prevented from speaking while actually in the country, but I don’t particularly have a problem with excluding them. And while I’m not sure what motives the UK has in keeping Weiner out, and find this announcement a little puzzling and distasteful, I can’t really work up all that much outrage over it.
I’m not getting the Wiener reference.
(Michael Savage, real name Michael Weiner.)
Agreed. Savage is a blowtorch bigot of the worst sort, and, you rightly pointed out, that is who the first amendment is designed to protect – in America.
15 others on the U.K.’s banned list are a KKK grand wizard, radical islamists, hezbollah terrorists, a Hamas MP, neo-nazis, a Jewish wackjob, and a Baptist preacher, among others. But most were banned for their history of violence and promotion of destructive actions.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/16-banned-from-britain-named-and-shamed-1679127.html
Although Savage did not ask for admittance into the U.K., the Home Office Sect’y said that Savage was barred from entry because his speech is “likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence…”
Really? From who?
The Home Office Sect’y was obviously referring to the Angelicans, – or Methodists, – well known for blowing up the tube, & lorries, rioting over ridicule, hi-jacking airliners, and suicide bombing public squares while screaming ‘Praise Jesus!’
Seriously, we all know who, which is why I think it is disingenuous to categorize ‘Fitna or Obsession’ as ‘phobic’. A phobia is an irrational fear. But, when millions of armed radical adherents of a particular ideology quote verses from a revered book as justification for their deadly and destructive actions, it would be irrational not to highlight the connection and take proactive, preemptive precautions.
The first action being the use of free speech in order to educate – then debate – in order to peacefully marginalize the offending party.
God bless free speech.
Yes, it’s not as if the British underwent a decades-long struggle between (primarily Anglican) Protestants and Roman Catholics that included beatings, shootings, terrorist bombings, and incidents like pulling men out of their sleeping beds and shooting them to death in front of their screaming wives and children, bombing schoolbuses full of children, etc., with Protestant reprisals against innocent Catholics by a little terrorist group called the Ulstermen. With some Catholic clergy sometimes participating covertly and some Potestant clergy openly egging on attacks. A struggle that only ended about 10 years ago with a little thing called the Good Friday Accords.
Nope, it’s not like the British know what inter-religious rivalry and inter-ethnic riots and violence look like. No, they’re just afraid of one particular tiny ethnic minority.
Also, it’s not like the Brits would think Savage a hatenonger for the way he goes after gays and others he doesn’t like. Nope, they’re just paranoid of Pakistani rage, right?
There’s definitely irrational fear here, but I’m not really sure the Brits are the ones showing it. Although I basically agree with Aziz, I’m still sympathetic with the Brits. They’ve actually dealt with this sort of thing, and don’t want to see any kind of return of it. Silly of them, I know.
For a minute there, I thought you were talking about Keith Olbermann.
There is one redeeming quality, the Home Secretary has failed to see in Michael Savage.
He comes with an ON and OFF switch.
Perhaps the Home Secretary had other reasons.
The Daily Mail following New Year’s in the UK:
Boozy Britain’s bloody New Year: A 999 call every seven seconds in alcohol-induced mayhem.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1103843/Boozy-Britains-bloody-New-Year-A-999-seven-seconds-alcohol-induced-mayhem.html
Michael Savage reported on his radio show:
There’s No England Anymore
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o3EorIbgHx0
As it says on Foxnews, we report you decide.
Cripes, I can’t resist:
First we have the Daily Mail, showing us a handful of lurid photographs that might be taken in any major city in the free world on a major revelry night any time in the last 50 years (assuming color photography was available). So let’s skip past the handful of pictures, and just go with the information:
We’re told, “every 7 seconds” there was a call to 999 (the Brit equivalent to 911) that night. Some simple questions, answers verifiable to anyone with an 8th grade ejimacation and a $5.00 calculator:
If it were every 7 seconds for one hour, that would be: 514 phone calls. If it were every 7 seconds for a full 24 hours, that would be a stunning 12,343 phone calls to 999 (the Brit equivalent of 911).
How big is the population of the UK? Easy answer, provided by any decent World Atlas, CIA World Factbook, or other publicly available resource: around 67 million.
I suspect the City of Chicago alone would be happy to have only that many calls in a day to 911 (the Yank equivalent to 999).
Question: how many of this paltry number of calls were just false alarms, or outright stupid? Such as the Daily Mail’s own example of people calling to ask what time it was in New York?
To go beyond the incredibly complicated math that only a Nukular physisist could prolly understand:
Do you suppose Michael Savage even knows the difference between England and Britain?
Truthfully, it’s a wonder that anyone treats Savage seriously. I agree: better to let him in, point fingers, and laugh. The Brits should be braver than this, I admit. I just understand the timidity: they’re still scarred from religious warfare on their streets by (ahem) members of a certain Abrahamic faith that did not originate in Arab lands.
Do you ever read Cranmer ?
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com
Well it’s a good stinging rebuke of Parliament, which probably needs one every now and then. I confess to having a hard time taking seriously the current or former Archbishop of Canterbury myself, as it’s basically a political position. Theologically, he would be considered pretty darned liberal on most things, but I don’t think you have to be “liberal” or “conservative” to note that the government’s acting venal.
Dean,
I appreciate your rebuttal, but I must say, “that morally relativistic dog won’t hunt.” The Catholic vs Protestant sectarian violence of decades past was an internal U.K. struggle for independence from British rule, with religious overtones, and not an external influx of some, violent extremists to reshape the culture landscape by any means necessary.
I’m loath to listen to Savage, but my media curiosity compels me to keep abreast of the wackjobs from time to time. That same curiosity tortures me to peek in on another blowtorch bigot, Herr Olbermann, at MSNBC. (equal time, etc, but I digress).
Near as I can tell, Savage is a Catholic (how devout is open to interpretation) . What I don’t hear from Savage is rants against the Protestants for their heresy, and calls for violent reprisal.
Savage does rant against the creeping imposition of Sharia law upon North America, and against the violent islamists’ death & destruction in Europe, plus generous screeds against militant homosexuals demanding the culture grant legal sanction to their flavor of body fluid swap.
So, if Savage did step foot into the U.K., we can all agree that the troubles would not erupt from dormant Catholic vs Protestant hatred, given he does not incite anger in those quarters. And the pretty, puce pride paraders may not like Savage, but their silliness is not a public safety hazard.
So, it’s not simply fear or paranoia ‘of one particular tiny ethnic minority’. It’s a realistic appraisal of the violence, from the islamists, that frequently infects many parts of Europe (Britain included). And the realization, in Britain, that the Muslim population is ‘rising 10 times faster than rest of society’.
It’s that population the the Home Office fears Savage will provoke.
Locobreath,
Try — a jewish kid from the Bronx…
Savage would like his listeners to believe he speaks of or for
judeo-christian values, but it’s not true.
Incidentally, the issue here is not about censorship nor free speech per se.
It’s about pre-emptive retribution.
UK blogger, Archbishop-Cranmer addresses the issue far
more succinctly.
http://archbishop-cranmer.blogspot.com/2009/05/uks-banned-list-and-pre-emptive.html
Yeah, I figured someone would say something like that, Locomotive Breath. After all, first we have a claim that there’s no Christian violence in the UK, in this very thread. When I point out that there was decades of it, now that “dog won’t hunt because….” yadda yadda yadda, same old shit.
You see, Locomotive, I have long noticed that Muslims aren’t allowed to have ethnic or political conflicts without it being blamed on their religion, but Christians are and if you try to say a conflict among Christians is, well, a conflict among Christians, you’re likely to be slammed as a Christian-hater. Do the same with the Muslims though, and you’re some sort of heroic truth-teller. What a joke.
Hell, the Islamophobes have even tried to make Yasser Arafat an “Islamic terrorist.”
My point is clear: the Brits KNOW what religious violence looks like. They fear seeing more of it started, period, because they had DECADES of it from Christians, NOT any other religious group.
The British home office obviously also doesn’t share the paranoia of some that the Muslims coming into the UK are violent–because the vast majority of them, including the vast majority of their clergy, are not. So just deal with that reality, and the reality that they don’t want to bring in elements that are going to torque off the nutjob fringe that does get through, on the fear that it might start ethnic conflicts where none now exist and none are desired.
I otherwise utterly and completely fail to see the relevance of your factoid offered that the very tiny Muslim population in the UK is growing rapidly. So flipping what?
The claim was made that there’s been no Christian violence in the UK. BZZZT, try again. It was a HUGE problem for DECADES, with support from both Protestant AND Catholic clergy (much to the chagrin of those who actually RAN those respective denominations). So deal with it. The Brits want to avoid a repeat with a new, tiny but growing and thriving ethnic group. I can understand perfectly why. If ranting ignoramuses want to blame it on the simple fact that those folks are Muslim and are “growing at a high rate” (which ALL new immigrant groups do for goodness sakes), fine, but I’m not playing that game with them. In fact I’ll call them out on their bullshit whenever and wherever I see it. ESPECIALLY if they’re Christians, as I am PARTICULARLY embarrassed and ashamed whenever a Christian pulls that shit.
By the way, I’ll repeat that I do agree with Aziz that they should probably let Savage in anyway. I’m just saying, I understand that with their long history of religious violence internally, I understand why they worry.
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