They eat their own - Savage versus Beck

Michael "Savage" Weiner says Glenn "The Hemorrhoid with Eyes" Beck is ripping him off.

Savage dumped by stations in Mississippi, Ohio

The bleeding continues.

First, Michael Savage began losing sponsors over his attacks on autistic children.

Now, he has begun losing stations.

Earlier this week, an entire statewide radio network in Mississippi dumped Savage.

The Super Talk Mississippi radio network has canceled The Savage Nation because of comments syndicated host Michael Savage made about autistic children last week.

Steve Davenport, president and CEO of Super Talk's parent company Telesouth Communications, confirmed The Savage Nation had been dropped from the network's lineup as of Monday.

"It was just horrible what he said," Davenport said Monday.

"When you talk about people in politics, business people, that's one thing. But when you talk about defenseless children, that's another."

Now, he is off the air in Cleveland, as well.

WHK AM/1420, the only Cleveland-area station carrying Savage's radio talk show, is break ing its contract with Savage's syndicator, Talk Radio Net work, said Mark Jaycox, who manages the Cleveland stations under the Salem Com munications corporate um brella. WHK is owned by California-based Salem Communi cations.

"This guy's a knucklehead, and I want to get rid of him," Jaycox said.

Aflac dumps Michael Savage over attack on autistic children

And now begins the bleeding.

Michael Savage's b.s. attempt at blunting criticism of his attack on autistic children isn't working, at least as far as insurance company Aflac is concerned.

Aflac announced today (July 21) that it is pulling its ads from the nationally-syndicated talk radio show The Savage Nation. A rep for the insurance provider told Brandweek that it will no longer advertise on the show hosted by Michael Savage (real name Michael Alan Weiner) because of offensive comments he made about children with autism.

“Aflac has a strong commitment to helping children through the Aflac Cancer Center and Aflac Foundation,” said a rep. “We understand that radio hosts pick on any number of targets however we found his recent comments about autistic children to be both inappropriate and insensitive.”

Aflac spent $90 million on advertising last year, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus.

During a recent show, Weiner said that autism is a scam. "I’ll tell you what autism is. In 99% of the cases, it’s a brat who hasn’t been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is," said the popular talk show host who went on to call autistic children “idiots” and “morons.”

Organizations like The Autism Action Network provided the contact information for many of the shows' major advertisers to parents and advocates. Groups have called for a boycott of Weiner's show.

This is what is known as a market-based solution to a problem. The Savage Nation attacked autistic children. The parents and families of autistic children appealed to The Savage Nation's sponsors to withdraw their support from the show. At least one sponsor has done so, and more may follow. Don Imus could testify about its effectiveness.

In fact, I'll bet the Savage Weiner woke up this morning, and realized this was exactly what might happen today, which led to his pathetic attempt to justify his indefensible remarks.

I wonder how many sponsors will have to dump Michael Savage before his employer follows suit.

Savage attempts to reframe his attack on autistic children

Michael Savage is trying to claim now that when he characterized 99 percent of autistic children as "brats," he was only trying to " boldly awaken parents and children to the medical community's attempt to label too many children or adults as autistic."

Nonsense.

Here is what Savage said about autistic chidren:

"You know what Autism is? I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is."

Does that sound like a "bold" commentary on the tendency of medical professionals to overdiagnose a disease? Please.

Savage is a thug who earns his living opining about issues he does not understand. But unlike most of his targets (pretty much everybody except white Republican men), this time he decided to pick on the most helpless among us - mentally-handicapped children. Yeah, I'm impressed, tough guy. What's next - setting fire to a nursing home?

Sorry, Mr. Weiner. The outrage is completely justified. You can't finesse it away. Nobody believes you give a damn about people being misdiagnosed as autistic. You haven't earned the benefit of the doubt.

Short of an abject apology, there is no walking this one back.