text: In 1980 Michael Weiner saw the publication of Weiner's Herbal: The Guide to Herb Medicine, which states the medical benefits of marijuana [7]. However he recently stated that the chemicals in marijuana make it too dangerous to be used as medicine. On his program, he strongly cautions against the recreational use of marijuana, occasionally devoting his show to "marijuana horror stories" and its claimed potential to ruin lives. He has authored a number of other books on various herbal medicine topics under this name. More recently, Savage's books are political in nature and published by WND Books, a partnership between the conservative website WorldNetDaily and Thomas Nelson, a publisher of Christian books.
  
  In January 2003 he published The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture, his first book under the pseudonym Michael Savage. The book quickly reached the top of the New York Times bestseller list earning Savage, as noted above, a commentary show on MSNBC. The controversial book directs attacks at "media bias", the "dominating culture of 'she-ocracy'", gays, and liberals.
  
  Critics have faulted Savage for making a number of assertions in the book that he often fails to substantiate with facts or resources. Exacerbating this condition is the fact that the book itself has no index. The book is divided into two- to four-page sections, many of which are near-exact replicas to columns he published on the conservative site NewsMax.com.
  
  In January 2004, Savage published his second political book, The Enemy Within: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Schools, Faith, and Military. His newest book, Liberalism is a Mental Disorder was released on April 12, 2005. Both of these books contained citations of nearly every assertion made, contrary to "The Savage Nation."
  
  In January 2006, Savage announced that he would be releasing a new book, The Political Zoo, in mid-March. [8] The book will contain satirical profiles and cartoons of different people in politics as animals in the "Political Zoo" including one of Savage himself, who will be portrayed as the zookeeper. Savage has remarked that the book will be "easier to digest" than his previous political books.
  
  Books as Michael Weiner
  Plant a Tree, New York : Collier Books, 1975 
  Bugs in Peanut Butter, Boston : Little, Brown, 1976. 
  Man's Useful Plants, New York: Macmillan. 1976. 
  Earth Medicine, Earth Food, New York : Macmillan Pub. Co., 1980. 
  The way of the skeptical nutritionist, New York : Macmillan, 1981. 
  Nutrition Against Aging, Bantam books, 1983. 
  Secrets of Fijian Medicine, Quantum Books, 1983. 
  "Vital Signs", Avant Books, 1983 
  Getting Off Cocaine, Avon Books, 1984. 
  Maximum Immunity, Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 1986. 
  Reducing the risk of Alzheimer's, New York : Stein and Day, 1987. 
  The Complete Book of Homeopathy, Garden City Park, N.Y. : Avery Pub., 1989. 
  The Herbal Bible, San Rafael, CA : Quantum Books, 1992. 
  Healing children naturally, San Rafael, CA : Quantum Books, 1993. 
  Herbs that heal : prescription for herbal healing, Mill Valley, CA : Quantum Books, 1994. 
  The Antioxidant Cookbook, Mill Valley, CA : Quantum Books, 1995. 
  [edit]
  Books as Michael Savage
  The Savage Nation, WND Books, 2003. 
  The Enemy within, Nelson Current, 2004. 
  Liberalism is a Mental Disorder, Nelson Current, 2005. 
  The Political Zoo, Nelson Current, 2006. 
  
  Michael Alan Weiner was born to a Russian Jewish family [1] in the borough of The Bronx in New York City. Michael Savage earned a Bachelor's from Queens College in education and sociology. He taught high school for several years in New York City. Following that, he earned two Master's degrees in ethnobotany and anthropology from the University of Hawaii. He then received a Ph.D. in nutritional ethnomedicine in 1978 from the University of California, Berkeley. His thesis was titled Nutritional Ethnomedicine in Fiji. Savage spent many years researching botany in the South Pacific, and has a background in alternative medicine. He has stated he was a liberal at one time and never served in the military.
  
  Weiner was a friend of openly gay beat poet Allen Ginsberg, offering to arrange readings for Ginsberg and Lawrence Ferlinghetti in 1972. [2] Some of his letters to Ginsberg are held in Ginsberg's archives and one of those letters describes an encounter with a young Fijian man. [3] Savage denies writing the letter and called it part of a "smear campaign" by "gay fascists". [4] Savage also once posed naked for a photograph with Ginsberg while swimming in Fiji. [5] Ferlinghetti views Weiner's reincarnation as Michael Savage as "total opportunism," the crowning achievement of someone who was "always looking to make a fast buck" and "always trying to think up new schemes to get famous."
  
  Michael Savage began his radio career in 1992 on San Francisco's #1 news/talk radio station KGO, first doing fill in work for other hosts, then getting his own show on the weekend. Two years later he was given a weekday show on KGO's sister station KSFO where he shared airtime with a liberal talk show host. He chose his "nom de voix" in "the Tonga Islands in the 1960s. I stumbled upon the name of a [19th-century] shipwreck who was locally infamous -Charles Savage. His exploits were legendary," he said. "So the name was bouncing around in my head." At the time, his slogan was "To the right of Rush, and to the left of God." On January 1, 1995 he was given his own show during the drive-time hours. The show quickly became a local hit. In 1999, he came to the attention of the Talk Radio Network.
  
  On January 17, 2000 he started doing an additional two hours of radio which was broadcast nationally. For the next eight months, Savage would spend a total of five hours a day just talking. His national experiment was a success, and on September 21, 2000, he stopped doing separate shows, beginning a full three-hour national show. After just one year, he was in 150 markets. By 2003, he was in over 200 markets and is currently the No. 3 radio host in the United States.
  
  In June 2003, he had a salary dispute with his flagship station KSFO who refused to renegotiate his contract. He was off the air for three weeks. On July 1, 2003 he began his show on a different station: KNEW in San Francisco. Since that dispute, he speaks badly of KSFO and of "Vanity or Pretty Boy" Sean Hannity, whose show replaced his on the station. Savage also speaks pejoratively when referencing his fellow talk radio hosts or individuals with whom he disagrees (see List of Michael Savage neologisms).
  
  As of 2005, Savage has between 8 million and 10 million listeners per week. This makes his show the third most widely listened to broadcast in the United States.
  
  In 1996 he applied to be a dean at UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism. When he was not granted an interview due to lack of qualifications--less than two years of experience in radio, with a Ph.D. in epidemiology and nutrition science--Savage filed a discrimination lawsuit that was eventually dismissed. The position instead went to China scholar Orville Schell who, according to Weiner, was less qualified than himself.
  
  Savage was hired by MSNBC to do a one-hour show starting March 8, 2003. On July 7, a mere four months later, he was fired for making anti-gay remarks in response to a caller, later identified as prank caller "East Coast Bob."
  
  Savage was doing an "Airline Horror Stories" piece, when Bob called into his show to talk about undercover security guards smoking in the bathroom. His next words were "Half hour into the flight, I need to suggest that Don and Mike should take your show so you can go to the dentist because your teeth are really bad". The words after "should" were bleeped out by a MSNBC exec, which would make one believe that the caller was actually making lewd comments about Savage's sexual orientation. Savage asked if he was a "sodomite", to which the caller answered "yes" . Savage then said to the caller: "Oh, so you're one of those sodomites. You should only get AIDS and die, you pig, how's that? Why don't you see if you can sue me, you pig. You got nothing better to do than to put me down, you piece of garbage, you got nothing better to do today, go eat a sausage and choke on it. Get trichinosis. Now do we have another nice caller here who's busy because he didn't have a nice night in the bathhouse who's angry at me today? Put another, put another sodomite on....no more calls? I don't care about these bums, they mean nothing to me. They're all sausages." [6]
  
  Before the show was canceled, MSNBC was replaying his show during primetime hours Saturday night; many believe the show would have been canceled even without his comments, and that MSNBC was simply looking for an excuse to dump the program due to pressure from special interest groups. Others point out that MSNBC has had poor programming and ratings performance for a long time and that many talk shows of all different political stripes have come and gone quickly on the network.
  
  