Autism advocates want talk show host’s job
July 21st, 2008From WCBSTV New York and AM New York:
Advocates are demanding that conservative radio host Michael Savage lose his job after he referred to children with autism as “brats” with neglectful parents during his nationally syndicated show. Savage says autism is a “money racket” to get extra welfare and extra help in school.
On his broadcast, Savage said: “I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out … 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, idiot.’ ”
Advocacy groups are planning a protest at the studios of WOR in Manhattan, and are calling for a boycott of all stations carrying Savage’s show. The program reaches an estimated eight million listeners a week on nearly 400 stations, behind only Rush Limbaugh’s and Sean Hannity’s in number of listeners, according to Talkers magazine, an industry publication.
Savage’s radio formula seems to lean heavily on invective and has been boycotted previously. MSNBC pulled the plug on a simulcast of his radio show in 2003 after he said he hoped a caller to his TV show, who had identified himself as gay, would die of AIDS. Last fall, a sponsor boycott cost him a million dollars in revenues after he said followers of Islam would do well to “take your religion and shove it up your behind” because “I’m sick of you.”
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