"There was a crank caller or worse..." reveals vitriolic daffodil Michael Savage. "A setup to destroy me in television orchestrated by unknown interests...
"Elsewhere on his website, Savage elaborates: "Out of nowhere a crank caller from a competitive talk show went from describing his airline horror story to making vicious personal attacks against me."
If you're not fluent in the delightfully paranoid patois of The Savage Nation, the San Francisco Chronicle provides some translation.
In plain English, a "crank caller from a competitive talk show" means "Bob Foster, 39, a Sacramento computer technician" whose hobby is prank-calling TV shows and giving "plug[s] to his favorite radio show, 'Don and Mike...'"
(Foster's website is worth a long visit. Lots of audio and video of the various pranks he's done, including the call that got Savage fired, and also a previous call to the petulant provocateur.)
Similarly, "vicious personal attacks" means that Foster told Savage that "Don and Mike should take over your show so you can go to a dentist appointment, because your teeth are really bad."
Ironically, Foster told the Chronicle that he's actually a Savage fan and that his "intention was not for him to get fired."
Savage, of course, isn't buying this, and frankly, neither am I. Could a lone computer technician really orchestrate the destruction of Savage's career via a couple of prank phone calls? To make this plan work, Foster first had to ensure that Savage's ratings were so low that MSNBC would find it extremely easy to part ways with him.
Then Foster had to somehow hypnotize Savage over the phone and turn him into a servile brain-slave: after all, if the dentally challenged talkshow host had simply responded to Foster's taunt by hanging up him, or even insulting him in a way that did not reveal his virulent anti-sausaugeism, MSNBC probably wouldn't have cancelled his barely watched show until, say, September.
Ultimately, it seems pretty implausible that Foster could have pulled off this feat without inside help. My theory: Savage himself was in on the plan, from the very start. To shore up his position as a dangerous media outsider too hot for liberal elite TV, he took the gig at MSNBC with the sole intention of getting fired.
And now, in the wake of his banishment, the erstwhile Allen Ginsberg groupie can milk his martyrdom for all it's worth: "They put the leper bells around me," he roared like a wounded chihuahua to the Chronicle. "I'm dead in the water on television...I am the underdog. I am Daniel in the lions' den. I am a victim...the left are like jackals in this country. They do not believe in freedom of speech, they only believe in freedom of their speech...It's been a struggle from day one. They don't want to switch to anything moderate or conservative. The bias is very liberal."
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