Savage Nudity

Money Mensch Disclaimer: I will read something whether it's written by someone left of Bernie Sanders, someone right of the President or anywhere in between.  What I want is to learn something from people who I talk to and whose words I read.    The good news is, once you have discovered this blog post or future eBook, you do not have to read all the things that I did, yet you can learn some of the most important points from a wide variety of people.  Disclaimer over.

For my son's last three years of high school, I picked up my son after jazz band rehearsals that ended at 9:00 p.m. on Monday nights.

This being the northwest burbs of Chicago and the band meeting throughout the school year, this included a lot of cold, dark nights waiting in my car behind the back of the high school where he graduated from in June of 2016, and where our daughter will soon be completing her freshman year.

Not having had a working CD player in either of my two clunkers for years, and both cars far older than XM or satellite radio, I would flip stations for anywhere from the fifteen minutes to half hour that I would end up waiting behind the school on all those long Monday nights, sometimes going straight there after one of my night meetings after a twelve-hour workday.

Folks, those were some long, stressful, dark and cold days.

Switching from station to station is how it came about that I ended up listening to Savage Nation with Michael Savage quite a bit on WLS AM 890 in the Chicago radio market.

   Savage Nation with Michael Savage

I would hear him bashing Obama for the years that I was picking up my son, and it would pique my interest enough to listen to the guy for a while.

He also rails against other typical things that conservatives rant about like immigrants, the welfare system, healthcare policy and the like.

When the show goes to break, a very gruff voice loudly says "Savage!" and then it usually goes to a commercial where Michael Savage, himself, would be shilling investing in gold through Swiss America, a commodity that I like but am more like a Goldberg than a Gold Bug and would not buy because this schmuck gets paid to promote it.

So after listening to this guy a few dozen times totaling several hours, I could not pass up picking up his 2008 book, Psychological Nudity, when I saw it on sale for a few bucks at a used bookstore last year.

The copy that I purchased happens to be a first printing of the first edition, and was signed by Savage.

That, and a listing on eBay, will get you about five bucks.  Instead, I will add it to my impressive growing pile of books to donate to the Salvation Army later this month.

Despite not buying into all of Savage's rhetoric, I reread this book over the past few days and thoroughly enjoyed his writing and many of his stories.

I will share a few with you.

Great First Line

Savage captured my attention right away: "Each day is an adventure into the unknown.  There are many 'stories' in everyday occurrences: every day brings the opportunity for joy, compassion, redemption.  By listening, we can learn to hear again.  By observing, we can learn to see again.  By conversing, we can learn to speak again."

Truth be told, that opening thought would have justified the two dollar purchase price to me.

First Mortgage

Having written this book in the throes of the subprime mortgage crisis, Savage writes about his own philosophy on the topic, specifically the huge mistake that I agree was made in giving mortgage loans without requiring documentation or requiring creditworthiness to anybody who could sign their name, including illegal aliens and unqualified minorities.

Savage writes of his father's first mortgage on a house that he purchased for $14,500 in Queens, New York, back in 1955.  His father put down 20 or 25 percent, then proceeded to work his ass off and pay off the house.

Much like the house where my mother still lives.  My parents purchased it for about $35,000, my mother recalls, in 1974 before I turned four years old.  That was even before my sister (1975) and brother (1977) were born.

I was going to write about it in an upcoming post, but the short of it is that they put twenty percent down, took out a twenty year mortgage, and paid it off early, at the end of 1990.  End of story, as Savage writes.

If you did not have adequate income, credit and a good down payment, you were not going to get the mortgage loan in 1955 or 1973 or even 1998, when my wife and I purchased our first non-rental home, an 800 square foot condominium.

You Don't Know What Tomorrow Will Bring

Savage writes that everyone thinks they're going to live to a ripe old age. You'll get a little ill - not totally ill, not horribly ill with cancer or a heart attack, nothing like that.

You'll be surrounded by loved ones who visit you at a resort somewhere or a retirement community.

You'll die in your sleep at ninety-nine years old with your loved ones there to comfort you.

Who you kidding?!

Savage writes the truth - that one out of a million go that way, but it is not happening to you.  More likely, you and I will suffer a horrendous, slow death, either from cancer or some other debilitating disease, maybe Alzheimer's, Parkinson's or some combination thereof.

You'll be left alone or beaten or robbed by some orderly who is just a wayward kid right now or perhaps someone in prison or on probation who will get hired at the nursing home for little more than minimum wage.

Sounds rough?  It is, but I have been with more than one relative who went out that way.  I could list them, but five of my relatives come to mind who suffered this fate.

As Savage writes, the grim reaper comes around and he gets closer and closer.

This story is not just to make you depressed, but to ask yourself what it is that you want to do with the rest of your life.

Working the System

This would be one of the least favorite stories for liberals, but Savage wrote about when he started out as a social worker in New York right out of college.

He had no furniture in his own apartment and was only making about $5,500 per year, when he was directed to cut a check to a welfare recipient couple for nearly that same amount so that they could furnish their apartment that they were also receiving vouchers for.

I would like to say that type of working the system does not happen anymore and that all welfare recipients are truly deserving, but I know that not to be true.

I, myself, worked with hundreds of welfare recipients for eight years as a probation officer and I can vouch that, yes, there is a fairly sizable portion of recipients who are completely disinclined and unmotivated to work for a living as long as welfare programs continue paying them not to.

He writes in a later story that he achieved with hard work, dedication, sweat, tears and pain.  He does not now, nor has he ever, expected someone to hand him an entitlement, especially not the government.

Like my father used to tell me, fight and work for what you want in life. Nobody is going to hand anything to you and the world owes you exactly nothing.

He Had His Share

Savage tells a story about an undertaker in his neighborhood growing up.

While others bragged about women where he grew up, as guys do everywhere, the undertaker simply said "I had my share" when asked.

The story is worth repeating because Savage claims that it was the most dignified thing a man ever said to him.

Middle aged guys like me do not really talk about that with other middle aged guys.  Men who I associate with have mostly all been married for several decades, and it just is not that exciting to hear about how they had sex with their wives.  I do not really want to hear it, anyway.

Plenty of that kind of talk went on while I was growing up, ever since junior high.  It reached its peak in my college years, and tailed off as years went by while I was working.

Separate Bedrooms

I do not want to share every personal detail, but sometimes my wife and I are not compatible sleeping partners anymore.

I will not say why with her, but for me it is fidgeting constantly while I sleep and getting up at least once per night to empty my bladder due to my enlarged prostate.  Many times twice.

Savage makes it somewhat humorous by writing that it's only poor couples who sleep in the same bed their whole lives, generally.  "Not everybody, don't get me wrong" he writes.  "But generally it's a mark of poverty to have to share a bed with someone your whole life."

He writes that you can still get together when you want, but you have two different lives, two different minds.  Why do you have to share every second in the bedroom?

You Are the Art Lover

Savage writes of visiting an art exhibit that was comprised of a rich woman's clothes, including a collection of her shoes and a dress in a showcase.

For a woman's shoes to be exhibited next to paintings by Masters like Hopper and Church was very upsetting to him.  He voiced his outrage while there.  The guard agreed with him, as would I.

The interesting point that he made is that he is not an art expert by any means, but then, there are no art experts.  Ultimately, you and I are the best judges of whether a piece of art is really a piece of art.

It is the average mensch like you or me.  It is not an academic who judges the worthiness of art any more than they should judge the worthiness of a baseball player.

Rather Pay for Care than a Car

In "No Assisted Living," Savage writes about exactly the way I feel.  The last place that I want to end up is in one of those shitty assisted living facilities.

It costs an arm and a leg and you get treated in a subhuman manner by low-paid marginal employees who couldn't give a shit.  Most of them would rather see you die if they could get an extra twenty bucks.

Too cynical?  I have visited five people in such facilities, and it was the rare employee who could give a damn.  The facility where both of my grandfathers and my father ended up costed over $10,000 per month and was supposed to be "good."

From having spent hundreds of hours at that so-called "good" facility, I would not even want to see what a "not so good" one would look like.

Savage does not like men who, at fifty, say "Well, at my age" or "I've already got one foot in the grave."

Source: accessibleaction.com/one-foot-in-the-grave

I do not say that, but sometimes feel like it.

Why think that way?  You're just going to speed up your own aging and die young if you think that way, he writes.

He vows never to go into assisted living.  He wants to stay in his house, like both of my grandfathers did until near the very end.

Like me, Savage does not want to be around a hospital.  The other people smell like piss and mothballs.

Get around-the-clock care if you can.  Easy for him to say, he has far transcended the middle class and doubtlessly has millions stashed away in numerous accounts.

I love the last lines in this story: "Get around-the-clock care if you can. I'll make sure that I put it away for that.  Another car?  I'd rather pay for care."

Adieu Savage

I can't say that I ever plan on listening to Savage Nation again or reading another one of his books.

I despise drug dealers more than most people, but it is hard for me to like a guy who supports Philippine Dictator Rodrigo Duterte's unscrupulous extrajudicial killing of all drug dealers and users without any due process, per this transcript provided by Media Matters:

SAVAGE: Oh yeah, the libs don’t like that at all. They’re calling him a fascist. See, liberals like drug, sex, and rock ‘n’ roll. The more, the better. The more dead children, the better. The more STDs, the better. The more cross-minded people there are the better. The more twisted, the better. The sicker the people are, the better. The more disease, the better. That’s because of lawyers and the ACLU, in my estimation. Denise, that’s a sad story, but you made your case.

What is the argument against the death penalty for drug dealers? Tell me the argument against it. I don’t know the argument against it. There must be one. There must be a liberal lawyer out there who defends drug dealers who can help us with it. What would be the argument against that? [Westwood One, The Savage Nation, 4/27/17]

Honestly, I do not have a problem for long prison sentences for drug dealers, and I do not mean parole after two years of a ten year sentence.  I mean doing the ten years!  But Savage takes it too far when he supports a guy who allows the indiscriminate killing of drug users without any due process at all.

Savage was someone who I listened to when I got caught up in his ranting late on Monday nights while waiting for my son to emerge from jazz rehearsals, and I found his book amusing and entertaining.

Other than that,