Petrelis Files

(Carl Romanelli, the man Dan Savage wanted dead.)








Chicago Reader: "Mouthy Idiot" Savage on Death Wish for a Green

The media critic for the Chicago Reader, Michael Miner, has penned an excellent story this week about Dan Savage endorsing the violent death of Carl Romanelli, a Green candidate, then retracting his stupid call for Romanelli to die like James Byrd.

From Miner's column:

Dan Savage, author of the syndicated advice column Savage Love, which runs in the Reader, was in Philadelphia last week, and he was interviewed on camera by Stephen Morse of the Daily Pennsylvanian. [...] He and Savage talked about the state's U.S. Senate race, where conservative Democrat Bob Casey is challenging incumbent Republican Rick Santorum and the Green Party's Carl Romanelli is a wild card. Morse reported that Savage told him that "the Green party and its supporters are tools and fools for the Republicans and the radical right" and that "Carl Romanelli should be dragged behind a pick-up truck until there's nothing left but the rope."

Savage's prescription recalled one of the most notorious hate crimes in recent U.S. history, the murder of a middle-aged black man, James Byrd Jr., in Jasper, Texas, in 1998.

Savage has a knack for being wildly but forgivably offensive, but this time it failed him. Gay blogger Michael Petrelis of San Francisco picked up Morse's story and commented, "While the GOP has to put up with the ranting of Ann Coulter, the Democrats are blessed with gay journalist Dan Savage, [who] is so keen to elect a Democrat to replace the truly nutty and homophobic Rick Santorum, he advocates violence against a Green Party leader in Pennsylvania." [...]

At Seattle's Stranger, where Savage is the editor, most readers who weighed in on its blog indulged him. Even so, to his credit Savage apologized. "Here's the diff between me and Coulter," he wrote. "I regret using that truck metaphor, and didn't mean it literally, and it was in poor taste, and I regret it. [...] But the Green in the race there is scum, and should be slapped -- just slapped -- and slapped hard. Not literally, though. No violence."

Savage told me he'd been a "mouthy idiot." He said, "I kind of regretted the words as they left my mouth." Petrelis is someone "I like and respect, and if he wants to let me have it, let it come."

But I'm not so sure I want to be liked and respected by you, Dan! Frankly, I wish you liked and respected American democracy more and understood that our country can easily survive challenges to the two-party system.

To learn more about Romanelli and his campaign, click here.