Michael Savage, the hatemongering talk-radio host ("You open the door to ['turd world' immigrants], and the next thing you know, they are defecating on your country and breeding out of control") and best-selling author, was recently fired by MSNBC for telling a caller to "get AIDS and die," but apparently he's not letting any grass grow under his feet: The folks at Free Republic report that he's thinking of running for governor of California. And his Web site confirms that he's giving the race some thought.

Well, fine. Maybe it'll happen -- and thus maybe for once the general public will get to see the slimy underside of the hard right. Guys like Rush Limbaugh tend to use euphemisms when stepping over the line from mere right-wing ranting to actual hate -- but Savage serves it up straight, no chaser. I don't believe all the listeners in the talk-radio audience are haters, by any means, but I think a good number are, and Savage says what they think. And now people who have day jobs may finally learn, to their horror, what a surprisingly large percentage of their fellow citizens believe. In a way, I think this could be a really good thing.

(UPDATE: Apparently I was wrong about one fact in the paragraph above -- I guess in much of the country you can listen to Savage if you have a day job. He's heard live in California from 4:00 P.M. to 7:00 P.M., so you can compound the annoyance of your traffic jam home by listening to him whine about gays, feminists, and immigrants. So instead of saying that "now people who have day jobs" can get exposed to Savage, I suppose I should have said, "now people who have lives....")