Talk Show a Far Cry From 'Happiest Place On Earth'

It promotes Disneyland as "The Happiest Place on Earth," christened its two luxury cruise ships the Disney Magic and the Disney Wonder and opened its 2002 annual report with a letter from Chairman Michael Eisner reassuring investors that the company is still all about "family, fun and fantasy."

But one catchphrase you probably won't hear Disney repeating is the slogan widely applied to its San Francisco talk radio station, KSFO-AM, by critics in the local broadcasting community. They call it "Sieg Heil on your dial."

The phrase alludes to KSFO's relentlessly right-wing lineup, which includes Rush Limbaugh, Fox News Channel stalwart Sean Hannity, Laura Schlessinger and that shooting star of reactionary radio, Michael Savage.

Of this group, Savage lately has drawn the most attention. His book "The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture" is a bestseller. Saturday his new weekly television program replaced the canceled "Phil Donahue Show" on MSNBC, a cable news channel that he derided in his book as "More Snotty Nonsense By Creeps" -- but that was before it plied him with greenbacks.

ABC Radio spokeswoman Julie Hoover describes Savage as "just a conservative talk show host like many others, mainly confining himself to talking about politics." Savage himself might resent such a dignified description of what he does for a living, which is not discuss politics so much as emit a near-hysterical outpouring of paranoid bombast for several hours a day.

Along with Schlessinger and some of the other ranters on KSFO, Savage exemplifies the philistinizing of American public discourse. He routinely derides developing countries as "the turd world." He calls hate-crime legislation "a payoff to the homosexual lobby" and says this about gay activism: "The gay and lesbian mafia wants our children. If it can win their souls and their minds, it knows their bodies will follow."

Savage's style is getting more scrutiny in the national media, including a revealing profile in The Times last week by my colleague Rone Tempest.

But his sponsorship by the proprietors of the Happiest Place on Earth has registered less widely, even if in San Francisco media circles the alliance has long been considered perplexing. "It always amazed me because I would not think Disney would want this on its record," says Alex Bennett, a liberal talk-radio host who coined the "Sieg Heil" crack.