Brits targeted wrong 'Savage,' US media silence deafening

8/31/09, Matt Towery: "I won't go into it again about my years as a student in England and how much I love that country.

• It is irrelevant to the "Alice in Wonderland" situation that just keeps getting more bizarre -
  

• Britain's banning of American conservative talk radio host Michael Savage from entering their country.

Savage, the third-most-listened-to radio talk show host in the United States, was lumped together on a list of "undesirables"

• with terrorists and murderers.

The list was compiled by the British home secretary, a woman who has since resigned her post. There's little doubt that Savage was grouped with the others because

• the British government needed some "balance" on its list -
  

• most of the others were Islamic extremists." (including murderers)
  

"Savage is, shall we say, "savagely" opinionated sometimes on his broadcasts. That's about as close to a crime as he comes.

• Now I am astonished as the hypocrisy of banning Savage has played itself out for the entire world to see.

Last week, Scottish Justice Secretary Kenny MacAskill allowed the release of Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the man convicted of bombing Pan Am flight 103 near Lockerbie, Scotland, in 1988.

• Two hundred and seventy people died.

MacAskill released the Libyan spy from jail because he reportedly had terminal cancer and his release was deemed by MacAskill

• as "compassionate."

This true "savage" in our story, the man who killed so many innocent people, returned to Libya

• to a hero's welcome and to the news that
  

• his cancer might not be so imminently terminal after all.

A less obvious outrage through all of this is that the American government and

• the U.S. media don't seem to care.

Why do the mainstream media in the U.S. keep acting as if there is even a shred of justification for this absurd measure against Savage? They act as if they don't know about the ban of Savage, or at least as if they don't consider it a news story.

You can bet the same silent media would have their megaphones of outrage out and active had

• the banned media personality been, for example, Bill Maher or Michael Moore, both of
  

• left-leaning persuasion. Then the outrage would be endless (and justified).

So I pose this question to the British government: Do the words uttered by a talk show host in America - words regulated by a very strict Federal Communications Commission - justify banning the man from your country?

• Where is the "compassion" for a man who has harmed no one?

Or do you reserve your compassion for bona fide "savages" - the kind that wreak or would like to wreak murder and mayhem?"

• "British take a tough stand on the wrong 'savage'" Jacksonville.com, 8/31/09, via Lucianne.com