Savage response: barred shock jock vows to sue
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Independent Minds
AP Photo/John Storey
Michael Savage said he was outraged that he had been named alongside hate preachers and a member of Hamas
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A US radio presenter barred from entering Britain said today he would sue the British government for defamation after his name was published on an official list of "promoters of hate".
Michael Savage, a so-called "shock jock" radio host who has a right-wing talk show called The Savage Nation, described the UK Home Secretary Jacqui Smith as a "lunatic" and said he had set his lawyers to work on the case.
Smith published the list - which includes Islamist extremists, American anti-gay preachers and Russian gang members - on Tuesday, accusing those named of "stirring up hatred" and "fostering extremism or hatred".
"For this lunatic Jacqui Smith ... to link me up with skinheads who are killing people in Russia, to put me in league with mass murderers who kill Jews on buses, is defamation," Savage said on his show, excerpts of which were aired on BBC radio on Wednesday.
"As a result of this, I am going to sue her."
Savage, who says he has between 8 and 10 million listeners across the United States, urged them to support him by cancelling any travel plans to Britain and by boycotting British-made goods.
"I don't know what they make there any more, but whatever they make, I suggest you don't buy it," he said.
"If they want to play hardball, we'll play hardball".
Savage was fired by cable news channel MSNBC in 2003 after he referred to a caller on his show as a "sodomite" and said: "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig!".
Smith defended her decision, saying Savage - whose real name is Michael Alan Weiner - was a man of extreme views who expressed them "in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence".
"Coming to this country is a privilege," she told Good Morning Television. "If you can't live by the rules that we live by, the standards and the values that we live by, we should exclude you from this country."
Artur Ryno and Pavel Skachevsky, former leaders of a violent Russian skinhead gang which beat and murdered immigrants, are also named on the list, along with the anti-gay U. S. Christian preacher Reverend Fred Phelps and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper.
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Comments
Come back next year.
Another wonderful action from our democratically elected government - defending free speech to the end
Banning people from speaking is not the way to become a role model for democracy while the fear of upsetting people is an argument used by cowards and a coward with a sword is the worst kind.
Now she has upset Mr Weiner, oh dear! I'm sure the courts will give him back his dummy.
The UK government has decided to start by announcing a list that people will agree with, before increasing the size of the list.
Jacqui, you've screwed up big time (at least your consistent). Ban an American radio broadcaster when the countries full of illegals, plenty of them muslims....with a good sprinkling of radicals (suicidal anti- western filth)....where is this country going.
Totally support you...and by the way...Britain's got no border controls if you wear a veil or over-tan your face. Plenty of Brits will put you up.
Since when has this ever been true?!
Bunch of idiots most of you lot.
This man, a public racist, lives in his own little world, where he is intolerant of change (Election of Barack Obama, treatment of autism, civil partnerships for gays). To my disgust, he chooses to share this with the world.
If he cares so much about what people are going to think of him as a result of this, why does he choose to make so many enemies by being so contentious and overtly ignorant?
no doubt they will want to barr me from the UK now for having such thoughts !! oh dear i will be called racist or whatever .
wonder if the U.S will let me in ? oh thats right they dont let immigrant scroungers in just like all the other countries stop them ! welcome to soft touch britian !!!!
This famous list should be used to keep out known criminals and terrorists. Not political commentators.
Bit by bit, Labour is turning this country into an authoritarian state dictatorship. Increasingly, we are ownly allowed to express ideas that are inline with offical state doctrine. Britain is no longer a democracy.
Michael Savage, you are a complete idiot. But good luck with your law suit. I hope it succeeds!
I disagree. Right-wing opinion is the only safety valve currently in place that helps majority-populations to express their inner-anger at the way their homelands are being turned into multicultural, non-cohesive, fragmented, dangerous communities without consulting them about it.
We are undergoing a bloodless genocide and you lefties are supporting it. What's wrong with you people? Do you hate yourselves that much? Or, are you simply one of Stalin's "useful-idiots" who lacks the guts to stand up for your own kind when they need you the most?
Does anyone believe for 1 second that the Chinese government would allow China to disappear as a nation-race from a mass influx of Africans and Muslims - leading to the total disappearance of the Chinese as a people within 6 or 7 generations? They wouldn't go for it would they. And you know they wouldn't. So why do you support the demise of your own kind?
Continue gagging the majority all you like lefties. But don't go crying to mum when we (the majority) snap under the sheer weight of left-wing censorship. It's your choice lefties. Your call. Now choose.
He doesn't want to hear from anyone about anything, cause he thinks he knows it all already.
[Isn't he Alex Jones's buddy]
You can send off some 'unsolicited' article to some online news media outlet Savage uses, along with your name, home address telephone number, e-mail address and a 300 word biography about yourself, yea it's true!!!.
Then the editor of that website 'might' publish the piece.
As long as it fits in with the agenda.
That's Michael Savages first amendment to the first amendment.
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Of course these 16 people and others like them pose a threat, not so much to the British Public but to the liebour party and the various liebour core block voters.
We can't have anyone speaking out about the ANTI-HOMOPHOBICS cause they are part of the liebour core voters and liebour want to after them at all costs.
Breeding them for their vote as they have cruelly bred the poor for their vote over the years.
Keeping them in poverty all their life, subsidising them so they can afford to have future liebour voters.
Telling them the biggest liebour lie, that liebour want to get them out of poverty, when all the time they are planning to keep them in it and increase their numbers.....don't we know about that!! impoverishing the nation.
YES, it is POLITICAL, these people are as Anti-liebour as they come, anyone outside of the UK expressing any Anti-liebour views just cannot be tolerated by liebour.
liebour are totalitarian fascists afterall.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P3UGSl94
Savage is sounding off because it's his job. This is radio gold for him.
None of this will ever amount to anything. Most of the people on the list are in prison anyway, and could never get here.
Please stop wasting column inches on this.
See how it works yet?