I’ve usually avoided listening to Michael Savage because I don’t:

* Like listening to commercials

* Don’t want more negativity and anger in my life.

Almost all talk radio seems aimed at inspiring rage.

Here’s a good article in Salon:

Long before Trump’s arrival on the scene, it was conservative radio talk show host Michael Savage, the idealogical godfather of “Trumpism,” who galvanized this insurgency. Savage gave it a voice and a powerful narrative, one that proved extremely helpful to those, like iconoclastic Senator Ted Cruz, who rose to prominence taking on the very same GOP beltway insiders that Donald Trump is now making so nervous.

Years before Trump, Savage had already redefined the nature of the American political landscape when he blew up the Republican Party establishment’s hold on its working class base. Trump can come or go, but this insurgency has a depth and breadth that can’t be ignored.

I have been a longtime listener to Savage because I think that, as a journalist, you risk being blindsided if you ignore someone to whom millions of your fellow Americans are tuning in. I saw the rise of Trump coming several months ago precisely because I know how deep the support runs in so much of America for Savage’s nativist mantra, that the very survival of the nation is threatened by the erosion of our “borders, language, and culture.”

Between American multinationals, who do everything and anything to avoid taxes, and American politicians, who so often trade on their office to amass vast fortunes, regular working class Americans feel abandoned. For decades, as businesses have increasingly exploited undocumented immigrants for cheap labor or moved operations out of the country entirely, these voters have become resentful, watching their wages stagnate and full-time jobs with benefits become scarcer by the day.

For many of them, Savage’s “Savage Nation” is a kind of sanctuary. In his running commentary, he’s gone after the duopoly of Republican and Democratic elites. While Trump was still playing nice in polite society and donating money to Democrats, Savage was building a huge audience skewering political correctness and going after what he perceived as the excesses of both parties.

Savage calls liberalism “a mental disorder,” and blames it for the disintegration of a national cohesion that gave America the backbone to conquer fascism in the Second World War, and the persistence to outlast the Soviet Union in the Cold War that followed. For Savage, the classical foundations of western civilization are innately superior to whatever else is out there.

Yet, he will go on populist rants denouncing U.S. multinationals for outsourcing tech jobs. He has zeroed in on the bi-partisan tradition of elected officials that go on to enrich themselves by doing the bidding of corporations, and even foreign interests.

Savage is a raconteur of many parts, with roots in New York City, where he grew up. He is a bestselling New York Times author, has a master’s degree in medical anthropology and a Phd from the University of California at Berkeley in epidemiology and nutrition sciences. He says he is an avid conservationist and animal lover, yet dismisses global warming as a hoax.

His extemporaneous musings about his daily comings and goings, his 11-pound poodle Teddy, and about his days growing up in working class New York, are poignant and display a rich emotional arc. Unlike his rightwing colleagues, that rant on politics exclusively, Savage’s dynamic range makes him engaging company.

He can talk to listeners about what he had to eat and drink the night before, and, in the process, share the vicissitudes of growing older with millions intimately. He’s speaking to you and only you, especially if you fit his key demographic, the disaffected white conservative voter. Back in a flattering 2009 New Yorker profile Savage’s show was described as “one of the most addictive programs on radio, and one of the least predictable.”