for anyone interested in hearing Michael savage go off on liberal callers
Savage used to be a Liberal who was trying to be an Academic at Berkely where he got his PhD.
Savage then studied at the
, earning a
in
in 1970 and a
in
in 1972.
He obtained a
in 1978 from the
, in
.
His
was titled
Nutritional Ethnomedicine in .
But academic politics led to his inability to gain tenure there and along with other career setbacks he transformed/hardened into a radicalized NeoCon.
Savage introduced himself to certain writers in the neighborhood of San Francisco in the 1970s. He befriended and traveled with poets and . Savage maintained a correspondence with Ginsberg consisting of ten letters and three postcards across four years, which is maintained with Ginsberg's papers at
.
One letter asked for Ginsberg and Ferlinghetti to come do a poetry reading, so others could "hear and see and know why I adore your public image."
Another acquaintance was poet and author
, who says that Savage dreamed of becoming a
in the mold of
.
Acquaintance Robert Cathcart says that by 1980, in his private conversations with Savage, he knew him to have conservative political views.
Schwartz stated Savage became alienated from the North Beach scene in the early 1980s. Savage had intense arguments with his liberal friends.
When asked about his shift in politics and other views, Savage replied,
"I was once a child; I am now a man." Savage has cited many occurrences in his life that helped shape his conservative views. Savage states that his opinions on
were partly shaped by his first job out of college as a
.
He described one incident in which his supervisor had him deliver a check to a welfare client to furnish their apartment, while his own apartment was furnished with cardboard boxes.
Another turning point occurred for him as a writer of health and nutrition books in the 1980s, when he experienced what he saw as "political opposition" after making the suggestion that the closure of homosexual bathhouses might be necessary in response to the emerging
epidemic.
In 1994 his final health and nutrition manuscript,
Immigrants and Epidemics, was rejected by publishers for being inflammatory.
In 1996, Savage applied to become the Dean of the
at the
. The University instead selected award-winning journalist and China scholar
. Savage sued the University, contending discrimination for being conservative.
Savage later dropped the lawsuit.