If you have been listening to the Michael Savage show over the last two nights, particularly the show on Tuesday night, you know that he has displayed a sort of rude, arrogant and condescending consternation over the news that 45% of Americans doubt human evolution. He launched into tirades against “religious fundamentalism,” and compared Christian fundamentalists to the Afghani Taliban, and bemoaned the fact that there are large populations that doubt (what he considers to be) an open-and-shut matter as proven by modern science.
There is a particular irony about Savage doing this.
In the days leading up to, and immediately after, the November 2006 midterm elections, Savage made clear his unqualified support for raising the minimum wage, as a measure of alleviating poverty.
Now, you think someone with “two Masters degrees and a real Ph.D.,” as Savage so condescendingly reminds us on a daily basis that he has earned, (as if a man or woman who couldn’t match his sheepskin collection wouldn’t know his or her posterior from a hole in the ground), would have had at least one economics class where he would have learned about the microeconomic ramifications of price floors and the relevance of that part of the economic science on the minimum wage.
To be frank, I think Savage knows better, and he is engaging in a demagogic ploy for ratings, for adulation and attention from the liberal mainstream press, and for differentiation from most other conservative talk radio hosts, by advocating the minimum wage increase.
However, let’s operate under the assumption that he is bona fide about wanting to see the minimum wage raised. Juxtapose this with his arrogant pro-evolution histrionics from two nights ago, and so note the irony.
On the one hand, he wants us to overcome our fundamentalist faith and superstition to accept truths (supposedly) arrived upon by the scientific method. On the other hand, he wants to jettison the scientific method to accept an emotionally popular and superstitious position.
[...] The trouble is, I don’t think Savage’s motives are entirely pure. I think that his frequent barrage of criticism of other conservative hosts isn’t just based on pure principle; if it were, then I would agree with him. But I also think the element of personal jealousy and the desire for mainstream media attention are just as much motives. Then again, he has attempted other deliberate PR stunts in the very recent past. [...]