Virulently Homophobic Shock Jock Michael Savage Axed at San Fran Radio Station

Anti-gay conservative talk radio host Michael Savage has been axed by a station in San Francisco, his home market.

Radio station KNEW-AM dropped Savage, citing a decision "to go in a different philosophical and ideological direction," reported the San Francisco Chronicle in a Sept. 11 article.

Conservative radio hosts John Kobylt and Ken Chiampou will take over Savage's 3-7 p.m. spot at the station.

Savage began his radio career in 1994 at San Francisco station KGO, going on from there to build an audience of up to 10 million listeners at more than 400 stations nationwide.

Savage's anti-gay and anti-immigrant commentary have often led to him being criticized, sometimes from commentators on the right. Bernard Goldberg, a conservative writer, included Savage in his his 2005 book, "100 People Who Are Screwing Up America," Wikipedia notes.

The Wikpedia article noted that in 2003, Savage had a short-lived television program at MSNBC, which ended after Savage received a prank call from Bob Foster, who let Savage to believe that he was gay. Savage then told Foster, "You should only get AIDS and die, you pig; how's that?"

The Wikipedia article also reported on other controversial comments, including Savage having said that young female volunteers helping San Francisco's homeless "can go in and get raped by them [homeless men] because they seem to like the excitement of it," and having also declared that autistic children "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.'"

Savage was profiled in a July New Yorker article that presented him as a complex, even contradictory individual, tracing his past association with the "Beat" poets, his early career in academia, and his interest in alternative medicine.

Savage was among 16 people, including anti-gay pastor Fred Phelps of the Westboro Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, who were put on a list by the British Home Secretary as not being allowed to enter the United Kingdom on the basis of being "considered to be engaging in unacceptable behavior by seeking to provoke others to serious criminal acts and fostering hatred which might lead to inter-community violence."

Right-wing talk radio hosts flocked to Savage's aid, denouncing the decision, with some laying blame for the Home Office's mandate at the feet of the Obama Administration, and many warning that the UK government's actions were a preview of what the "politically correct" faction in American society would do to this country.

No one, however, stood up to defend Phelps, whose congregation preaches that war casualties and natural disasters are God's punishment against America for its failure to persecute gays in the Biblically prescribed manner (i.e., by killing them).

Savage later appealed to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for help in having the ban lifted, despite having criticized Clinton in the past.

Savage was eventually removed from the list, the Wikipedia article said.