Controversies
In a 2006 interview with the Daily Pennsylvanian, Savage stated that then-Green Party Senate candidate Carl Romanelli, whom Savage claimed was partially funded by state Republicans for a spoiler effect against Democrat Bob Casey, "should be dragged behind a pickup truck until there's nothing left but the rope". In the same interview, he stated, "Mr. Romanelli should go fuck himself." Immediately after the interview, Savage wrote, "I regret using that truck metaphor, and didn't mean it literally, and it was in poor taste, and I regret it."
On HBO's Real Time with Bill Maher July 15, 2011, during a panel discussion of the debt limit increase negotiations between the U.S. Congress and President Barack Obama, Savage said in a stand-alone remark, "I wish the Republicans were all fucking dead." He apologized for his remarks on his blog later the same night saying in part, "I don't feel that way. My dad is a Republican. (Well, he says he's an independent, but he hasn't voted for a Democrat since JFK. My dad is a Republican.)"
Savage has been glitter bombed three times, twice in 2011 and once in 2012, by protesters who alleged that Savage is transphobic, among other accusations. A 2012 Feminist Wire piece argued that the "... the popularity of the campaign and its legitimacy depend on the very subtle exclusion of non-white and non-bourgeois bodies".
Savage came under scrutiny for an April 13, 2012, anti-bullying speech in which he encouraged high school students to "learn to ignore the bullshit in the Bible about gay people", prompting some students to leave the auditorium. Savage apologized on April 29 for calling the walkout "a pansy-assed move", saying, "I wasn't calling the handful of students who left pansies (2,800+ students, most of them Christian, stayed and listened), just the walkout itself." Savage stood by the central point of his speech.
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