Howard Stern finally turns on Bush, gets silenced in return
Posted by Jon on Thursday Feb 26, 2004 at 8:12 PM Pacific Time
Disclosure: I am a diehard Howard Stern fan. I generally listen to the entire show, daily, and have done so for about 14 years.
In late 2002 and during much of 2003, Stern was so ridiculously pro-Bush and pro-Iraq War, I almost stopped listening. Almost.
And so it was, then, that I nearly wept with joy on Monday morning when Stern, upon returning from a weeklong vacation, announced: “Over vacation, I read Al Franken’s [“Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them”]; it’s great. He is phenomenal.”
Stern’s impromptu ass-kissing session occurred despite the fact that Franken takes a shot at Stern at the very beginning of the book.
“The first page, he insults me,” Stern said. “He talks about how Ann Coulter and I are McCarthy-ites. It was just really insulting. And I just said, ‘You know, I can get past this, if Al doesn’t like me.’ I’m not even sure why I’m like McCarthy, but, evidently, I am, according to Al. But you know what? If Al says it, it must be true, because I love the book, and he seems to be right on about everything.”
And then Stern said the words that made my day: “If you read this book, you will never vote for George W. Bush. … I think this guy is a religious fanatic and a Jesus freak, and he is just hell bent on getting some sort of bizzaro agenda through–like a country-club agenda–so that his father will finally be proud of him. … I don’t know much about Kerry, but I think I’m one of those ‘Anybody but Bush’ guys now. I don’t think G.W. is going to win. What do you think about that?”
Stern admitted that his change of heart was, in part, brought on because of the FCC crackdown that began after Janet Jackson exposed her breast on television during the Super Bowl Half-Time Show.
On recent shows, Stern had been airing audiotape of the post-breast Congressional hearings, during which Congresswoman Heather Wilson (R-New Mexico), in a ridiculously over-the-top, dramatic performance, lectured Mel Karmazin–CEO of Viacom, the company for which Stern works–about the “nasty” half-time show and how it severely affected her 4th-grade son. Stern subsequently exposed Wilson’s poor voting record on gun control and a myriad of other issues, as well as the enormous amounts of money she has accepted from Enron, defense contractors and other special-interest groups, and suggested that perhaps Wilson is more of a threat to child welfare than is the media.
So it’s no surprise, then, that against this backdrop, media conglomerate Clear Channel–a Texas-based organization with ties to Bush–announced on Wednesday (2/25) that it had yanked Stern from its radio stations in Ft. Lauderdale and Orlando, FL; Rochester, NY; San Diego, CA; Pittsburgh, PA; and Louisville, KY. (It’s worth noting that two of those five states–most notably Florida–are still considered “swing states” in the upcoming election.)
Coincidence? Not likely. Stern even hinted during his show on Thursday that some of the behind-the-scenes action that led to his muzzling may have included communications that Wilson–or someone connected to her–had initiated with someone in a position to yank Stern’s chain.
“This regime–and I will now call it a regime–has gotten absolutely bizarre. Between Aschroft and Cheney … and their puppet Bush, and Powell and his son [FCC chairman Michael Powell] … I mean, this has gone berserk. I mean, I’ll be off the air, and I won’t be able to talk to you about it anymore, but, listen, it’s bad. This is the most unbelievable thing, what’s going on, where people are being thrown off the air without a trial.”
Stern seemed intent on making the most of however much time he has left to broadcast, telling his listeners: “These fascist, right-wing a-holes are getting so much freaking power, you gotta take back the country. [Those are] my last words to you. I don’t know how many more days I have on the air.”