Media columnist Tim Rutten of the Los Angeles Times strangely suggests MSNBC’s “easy” firing of ersatz-conservative/Yosemite Sam stand-in Michael Savage was actually caused, via the magic emanations of penumbras, by the pen of Anthony Kennedy:
[O]ne of the things that made it easy was the great national change of heart conclusively ratified two weeks ago…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.
Wrong. Savage wished a caller would “get AIDS and die.” He wished death on a member of his audience. That’s something no talk-radio or talk-TV executive should tolerate. It’s too bad PBS’s Julianne Malveaux (wished death on Clarence Thomas) and NPR’s Nina Totenberg (wished AIDS death on Jesse Helms or his grandchildren) never were on the pink-slipped end of that civility lesson.