A mighty rhetorical change

Ethnic stereotypes and exaggerated dialect were staples of late 19th century American satire, particularly among progressive writers.

So, in 1901, when columnist Finley Peter Dunne -- a fervent anti-imperialist -- came to criticize Supreme Court decisions sanctioning the United States’ acquisition of territorial spoils from the very popular war against Spain, his redoubtable Archery Road saloonkeeper, Mr. Dooley, told his favorite foil, Hinnissy:

“No matther whether th’ constitution follows th’ flag or not the’ supreme coort follows th’ iliction returns.”

That’s still true, but the country also follows the court. That’s part of the reason the shambling managers of MSNBC, the faltering cable-news network, so quickly fired talk-show host Michael Savage after a homophobic outburst on his Saturday program. Savage, whose hate-laced daily radio program airs on more than 300 stations, insisted that he believed he was off the air Saturday when he responded to what he alleged was an insulting call from a talk-show rival. But the same executives who just last March gave a live TV program to a guy whose reputation was built on hateful rhetoric are having none of that now. “The decision to cancel the show was not difficult,” MSNBC Vice President Jeremy Gaines has said.

And one of the things that made it easy was the great national change of heart conclusively ratified two weeks ago, when the U.S. Supreme Court ringingly struck down Texas’ anti-sodomy law. As the philosopher Michael Walzer once said, the American notion of moral progress consists not in the creation of new rights, but in the extension of traditional freedoms among those to whom they previously have been denied. When Justice Anthony M. Kennedy read the court’s majority opinion from the bench, he signaled that the inviolable privacy that makes possible basic human dignity now belongs equally to all.

At that moment, the court formally acknowledged the completion of a process that began when individual gays and lesbians heroically asserted their identities in public and continued through the wider nation’s realization that these were their children, their nieces and nephews, their doctors and lawyers and accountants, their favorite athletes and entertainers, their friends and neighbors.

In 1963, every state in the union had a law against sodomy; in 2003, a popular talk-show host was fired in less than 48 hours for telling a gay caller to “get AIDS and die.”

Even Savage, who by all evidence is a man beyond shame, felt compelled to apologize Tuesday on his Web site: “This was an interchange between me personally and a mean-spirited vicious setup caller which I thought was taking place off the air. It was not meant to reflect my views of the terrible tragedy and suffering associated with AIDS. I especially appeal to my listeners in the gay community to accept my apologies for any inadvertent insults which may have occurred.”

MSNBC, mired in last place among the three cable-news networks, and by all indications bereft of purpose or professional compass, has been trying to save itself by morphing into a kind of Fox News Lite -- less news, more nasty right-wing chat masquerading as redress for the rest of the media’s alleged liberal bias. Savage’s show was a shabby first step in that dubious direction.

His sacking may be another sign of the growing realization, especially among thoughtful conservatives, that the culture wars’ rhetorical slipstream may have sucked us all across a line that shouldn’t have been crossed. Take, for example, the disapproval many conservative commentators have expressed not only of Savage, but also of Ann Coulter, the TV personality and bestselling polemicist whose new book, “Treason,” not only alleges that Democrats are habitual traitors, but also attempts to rehabilitate Sen. Joseph McCarthy.

Still, to media scholar Marty Kaplan, who directs the Norman Lear Center at USC’s Annenberg School for Communication, the process of reconsideration hasn’t gone far enough. “I think the reason MSNBC canned Savage was that this time he got caught,” Kaplan said. “He has been saying things like this on radio and TV for years, but he’s always left a trap door so that when he’s spewing hate speech and somebody objects, he can charge misinterpretation or that it was only in jest.

“This time, Savage broke the fundamental rule of deception that these guys live by. It’s interesting that, up until now, Ann Coulter has not been held to the same standard. How is it that she can get away with what she does, but Savage couldn’t? It all has to do with theater. When Savage let loose with his version of ‘The Full Monty,’ there was no way for management to turn away. It was what it was and nobody could deny it. But for some reason, people still pay Ann Coulter to go on the air and are able to say with a straight face that it’s part of the fair play of ideas. A genuine standard of community decency should object to her claims of treason as strongly as it does to lap dancing.”

Two generally conservative commentators who share Kaplan’s reservations are former New Republic Editor Andrew Sullivan and the Wall Street Journal’s Dorothy Rabinowitz. On his influential Web site, Sullivan on Tuesday described Savage as “a lout, a loudmouth, a bigot for hire and a significant part of what is wrong with the far right. The amazing thing is not that he no longer has a big job at MSNBC. The amazing thing is that he ever had a job in the first place.”

On Monday, in a review of Coulter’s book, Rabinowitz mused that “at one point, a book representing Democrats as the party of treason and Sen. McCarthy as one of the greatest heroes of the age, might have given some publishers pause. Not today -- the era that has put its money on outrage merchants and shock jocks.”

There is a lingering question about the Savage affair. He may be off TV, but why have he and his ilk -- home-grown rhetorical terrorists -- been allowed to find a secure haven in the electronic Afghanistan of talk radio?