Britain's Brain-Dead Ban on Michael Savage

I probably wouldn't invite him to dinner -- but only because I'm not sure how happy Mrs. Oklahomilist would be about it -- but the British ban on Michael Savage should be seen as a national insult.

This news broke Wednesday.

Sixteen people banned from entering the UK were "named and shamed" by the Home Office today.

Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said she decided to make public the names of 16 people banned since October so others could better understand what sort of behaviour Britain was not prepared to tolerate.

The list includes hate preachers, anti-gay protesters and a far- right US talk show host.

[SNIP]

"This is someone who has fallen into the category of fomenting hatred, of such extreme views and expressing them in such a way that it is actually likely to cause inter-community tension or even violence if that person were allowed into the country," Ms Smith told BBC Breakfast.

At the risk of falling prey to Ms. Smith's "name and shame" tool, she must be one of the dimmest bulbs of British history, and that's saying something. Michael Savage isn't everyone's cup of tea, but he's not the evil hatemonger his critics like to paint. His stock in trade is the constitutionally protected (in America anyway) right of free and direct speech about those things he says as dragging this nation into the dust bin of history.

I don't listen to him a lot because his radio signal at Oklahomily HQ is faint and Cardinal baseball trumps politics in the evenings, but I have never heard him say anything that could be construed as advocating violence. Tension, maybe. A lot of liberals get their panties in a twist over Savage's comments, but I think they secretly enjoy it.

Also named are American Baptist pastor Fred Waldron Phelps Snr and his daughter Shirley Phelps-Roper, who have picketed the funerals of Aids victims and claimed the deaths of US soldiers are a punishment for US tolerance of homosexuality.

I find the Phelps reprehensible, and it's probably a good thing they can't go to England now. Doing so might inflame war fever against us that has only begun to calm now as Brits get over Obama's DVD snub to Gordon Brown and the Queen's iPod.

My other question to Ms. Smith is this: Did any of these Americans actually say they wanted to go to England in the first place, or is your "Name & Shame List" purely pre-emptive?

If so, you are a shameless, as well as a brainless, twit. Are you running for something?