TRICKLE DOWN TYRANNY

One of talk radio’s most inflammatory voices fires a damp squib at the president, the liberal media and society in general.

Renowned for exploding into fits of vulgar profanity at the slightest provocation, Savage (Trickle Up Poverty: Stopping Obama's Attack on Our Borders, Economy, and Security, 2010, etc.) has long inspired theories that his rabidly conservative posturing is an elaborate put-on. Whether or not his radio persona is a calculated ruse, it is clear that his books are an afterthought, a sideshow with no other aim than generating profit. To say that Trickle Down Tyranny was phoned in would be too generous to a man who has made a fortune by shouting apoplectically. Most of the book reads like a high school intern combed through a year of his transcripts and deliberately selected the most soporific snippets, stitching them together at random into a manuscript-length document. Equally sure that he’s sharing secret knowledge that no one else has the courage or wherewithal to state and that everything he says is just common sense, Savage provides little substantiation for his assertions. He delves deeply into arcane conspiracy theories involving the Trilateral Commission, George Soros and the Weather Underground. The author vaguely sorts his fiery statements (“The Occupy Wall Street demonstrators have one important characteristic in common with Barack Obama and Adolf Hitler: They’re blatantly anti-Semitic”) and rhetorical questions (“Is Holder going to pardon the Gitmo terrorists…and then release them with compensation because they were freedom fighters…? Is this part of Obama’s overall plan to grant amnesty to illegal aliens in order to get reelected?”) into sections dealing with finance, foreign policy, energy and so on, but no other organization or structure is in evidence.

Fans of Savage’s radio program should stick to the genuine article; opponents of President Obama should turn to someone whose sympathies are not so mercenary and self-serving.