MSNBC AND RADIO talk show host Michael Savage made good on his promise to exact
retribution against critics attempting to cut off his advertising dollars by filing
a $1.2 million lawsuit.
The lawsuit came three months after a threat he made on his Feb. 27 radio show
addressed to the “rats” that boycott his advertisers.
“If you continue this, we’re going to go after your funding sources,”
Savage said. “And we will do everything we can within the legal realm
to cut off that funding.”
In May, Talk Radio Network, the Oregon-based company that syndicates Savage’s
radio program, filed a lawsuit in Illinois against three Web sites — savagestupidity.com,
takebackthemedia.com
and michaelsavagesucks.com
— that use Savage’s own words from his radio show against him.
On his program, Savage has said the U.S. “is being taken over by the
freaks, the cripples, the perverts and the mental defectives,” that gays
and lesbians are “perverts” and that “the gay and lesbian
mafia wants our children.”
TRN asked the Northern District Court of Illinois for $1.2 million in compensatory
damages, plus any punitive damages proven at trial.
The suit accuses the Web sites of distributing “false and malicious e-mails”
and of stealing broadcasts of Savage’s show to “unlawfully”
disrupt TRN’s business relationship with advertiser Culligan International
Company of Northbrook, Ill., according to a summons served to Gunilla Leavitt,
a defendant in the case.
Leavitt and her husband Thomas run the California-based Web site savagestupidity.com,
and are named as defendants in the case.
The other defendants are Julie Sigwart, who co-founded the California-based
media watchdog group Take Back the Media (takebackthemedia.com),
and a “John Doe,” believed to reside in Arizona, who represents
the Coalition for Human Decency and operates michaelsavagesucks.com.
Doe has not yet been served his summons, but it was an e-mail sent by the Coalition
for Human Decency that provoked Culligan to stop advertising with TRN, Doe told
the Blade in an e-mail.
The March 1 e-mail to Culligan contained several Savage quotes and links to
Savage sound bites to inform the company of a national boycott of all Savage’s
advertisers.
One Savage quote sent to Culligan aired on the first day of his national radio
syndication, June 13, 2002: “I’m more powerful than you are, you
hateful little nothings. You represent nothing but the perverts that you hang
around with.”
Culligan discontinued advertising with TRN’s Savage show a week after
receiving the e-mail.
Public Citizen, a national
non-profit consumer advocacy organization, took the Leavitts’ case and
filed a motion to dismiss because they live in California and not Illinois.
The suit is “harassing” and “meaningless,” said Paul
Levy, lead counsel on the case.
“You can’t sue someone just because you have a Web site that can
be downloaded where you want to sue,” Levy said.
But TRN, Savage’s syndicator, professes to advocate free speech.
“The rights of people to speak their minds is something we support 100
percent,” said Mike Lofrano, chief operating officer of TRN.
The Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation, which led a national protest
against Savage’s Saturday MSNBC show, argues there are flaws in Lofrano’s
logic.
“It is unfortunate when folks who advocate free speech on the airwaves
try to stop someone else’s right to free speech in the courts,”
said John Sonego, GLAAD director of communications.
ACTION! INFO
Talk Radio Network
P.O. Box 3755
Central Point, OR 97502
541-664-8827
www.talkradionetwork.com
Take Back The Media
www.takebackthemedia.com
Coalition For Human Decency
www.michaelsavagesucks.com
Savage Stupidity
www.savagestupidity.com
