Written By Rick Ellis, Sunday, March 9th, 2003

In the days leading up to the debut of MSNBC's "Savage Nation" program on Saturday, I received scores of emails from already angry viewers, demanding that I join the effort to have Michael Savage removed from TV at the earliest opportunity.

I didn't join, for a variety of reasons. I wasn't going to censor him before even the program aired, and I wasn't sure that his radio show was going to be an accurate reflection of what we would see on TV. But most importantly, I had a strong feeling that television would strip him of what his listeners find compelling. It's one thing to listen to someone say something outrageous...it's another to look them in the eye when they're saying it on television. Even the great communicator Rush Limbaugh struggled on daily TV. It's difficult to remain angry and not scare the hell out of everyone watching.

The Savage Nation debuted on Saturday, and while I was expecting a lot of things, what I wasn't expecting was a defanged, often boring Savage, wading through call after call from devoted fans. It wasn't the longest hour I've ever spent watching television, but it may have been one of the most pointless.

The format is pretty straight forward. A short taped piece served as an opening introduction ("Hey, Michael meets a fan! Hey! She's a cop! And maybe a lesbian!"). But the meat of the show was just Savage, standing behind a microphone, answering carefully screened calls. Notice that I don't say looking at the camera, because while his body was pointed in that general direction, his eyes appeared to be glued to a TelePrompTer or producer in the lower right corner of his vision. The more he stared in that direction, the creepier the effect.

It certainly didn't help matters that producers seemed to have prescreened the life out of his callers. Every voice except one was strongly pro-Savage, and that call was a prank foisted on the show by noted media activist Michael Pellegrino. Ironically, his prank was one of the few lively moments of the program.

Calling in as "Steven from New York," Pellegrino began with some compliments, but then the conversation quickly turned south....

Steven: "Hi, Michael. I've been listening to you for years and I'm really glad I'm on your first show."

Savage: "How do I look, Steve? You like my makeup?"

Steven: "You look terrific. The jacket looks like vinyl, but I'm sure it's leather."

Savage: "Nah! Don't you dare say that! And inside it I have real fur!"

Steven: "First of all, I really can't wait for you to take on these guys from Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting --"

Savage: "Nah! Don't even mention them! I don't refer to any of the people who are slandering me! They are irrelevant!"

Steven: "OK, OK. I want to ask you. My girlfriend is from Mexico, one of the places you call a 'Turd World Nation.' Who --"

He was then cut off by producers, and the show settled back down to its mundane "me-too" march towards the top of the hour.

Part of the problem for Savage seemed to be that he has taken the criticism of his critics and wisely opted to stay away from name-calliing. But stripped of his biggest tool, he was forced to pick oddly unsatisfying fights with Hollywood and the Bush Administration.

Early in the episode, he aired a clip showing a number of dead bodies (presumably Kurds), and he complained that the White House has refused to use clips such as that one to remind Americans why Sadaam Hussein is a dangerous man. He implied that only he had the courage to air it, and he would continue to air it until other people picked up the story.

The problem was twofold. The clip was from 1988, which doesn't exactly qualify as "breaking news." Worse, similar clips have aired hundreds of times in the past 15 years. My suspicion is that it isn't being aired more often only because it's an old pre-Gulf War clip that most people who don't have a TV show would consider to be old news.

More specifically, it isn't talked about more often because just about everyone (from the Bush Administration to the Turkish government) is scared of the Kurdish question. Most observers are afraid of Kurdish attempts to build an independent Kurdistan out of the rubble of Iraq, and no one wants to give them any more airtime than necessary. So despite Savage's claims, there are legitimate reasons to not hype the video. Of course, that's not as fun of a story as the way Savage spins it.

His fight with Hollywood was also strangely ineffective. His choice for "Hollywood Idiot Of The Week" was director Martin Scorcese, an odd choice considering his lack of visibility on the issue of an impending war with Iraq.

In the end, the show was long, and often boring. While it makes sense that producers wanted to build a wall around Savage in order to preempt any possibility for him to begin ranting at his opponents--the result was a bland, self-congratulatory exercise in mediocrity.