Howard Stern has joined a media elite that
includes Walter Cronkite, Bill Moyers and Christiana
Amanpour. Stern's name has been scrawled on the John
O'Neill Wall of Heroes. There is an Electoral Uprising
coming in November. We are, therefore, in grave danger
of the Tommy Franks factor kicking in. Remember?
In an interview with Cigar Afficianado, the
_resident's now "retired" General said, with a wink
and a nod, 'Oh,if there is another 9/11 they will
declare martial law." Look it up in the searchable LNS
database at www.mindspace.org\liberation-news-service\
Matthew Gilbert, Boston Globe: Harrison calls
Stern's's recent crusade "historic." "Anytime you have
somebody suddenly igniting political interest with an
audience who has the kind of loyalty factor Stern has,
it could turn an election." A large percentage of
Stern's listeners -- some 8 1/2 million a week -- were
leaning in favor of Bush, Harrison says. "If Stern could turn several million Bush supporters away from Bush, that has even more impact than Rush Limbaugh, who's preaching to the choir. So this is pivotal to what is shaping up to be a close election."
Break the Bush Cabal's Stranglehold on the US
Mainstream News Media, Show Up for Democracy in 2004:
Defeat Bush (again!)
Could Stern's anti-Bush rants shock the vote?
By Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff, 3/18/2004
American liberals have been waiting for a perch on
talk radio, a medium dominated by conservative and
right-wing voices since the 1980s. And on March 31,
the new Air America Radio network will give them a
nascent one, as it premieres in the New York, Los
Angeles, and Chicago markets. Just as "The Daily Show"
brings an openly lefty spin to TV news, Air America
will fly in the face of the right wing with hosts
including Al Franken, Janeane Garofalo, and Marty
Kaplan.
But wait a minute: Is "shock jock" Howard Stern --
stripper aficionado, champion of misfits everywhere,
all-purpose radio provocateur -- already giving
liberals a voice on the airwaves? And is that voice
powerful enough to affect the upcoming presidential
election?
Since the FCC crackdown on media "indecency" in the
wake of Janet Jackson's Nipplegate incident, Stern has
transformed his morning variety show into a rabidly
anti-Bush talk forum. Every weekday, he has been
devoting hours of his broadcast (locally on WBCN-FM,
104.1) to impassioned criticism of President Bush and
support of Senator John Kerry. Railing tirelessly
against the president, Stern has been attacking Bush's
yoking together of church and state, the legitimacy of
his National Guard service, his use of Sept. 11
imagery in his campaign ads, his stances regarding
First Amendment rights, his handling of Iraq, and his
stands on gay marriage and stem-cell research.
"Join me and friends of this show who are outraged,"
Stern said on the air last Friday. "Vote out every
Republican you can find." He has also been urging his
listeners to send money to Kerry's campaign, calling
him "a good man" and praising his record in Vietnam as
well as his later criticism of the Vietnam War.
"With all the talk of liberal talk radio," says
Michael Harrison, the editor and publisher of Talkers
magazine, "we're seeing emerging from the ranks of
`shock jocks' one of the most potent and articulate
liberal talkers we've seen in years."
Harrison calls Stern's's recent crusade "historic."
"Anytime you have somebody suddenly igniting political
interest with an audience who has the kind of loyalty
factor Stern has, it could turn an election." A large
percentage of Stern's listeners -- some 8 1/2 million
a week -- were leaning in favor of Bush, Harrison
says. "If Stern could turn several million Bush
supporters away from Bush, that has even more impact
than Rush Limbaugh, who's preaching to the choir. So
this is pivotal to what is shaping up to be a close
election."
"On a national level, I don't know how much influence
Stern could have," says Chuck Todd, editor of The
Hotline, a Washington-based daily briefing on
politics. "But we assume too little at our own peril
when it comes to Stern and talk radio in general. . .
. Does Bush really need to worry about him? If New
York were a swing state, we definitely would take this
more seriously. Is Stern's popularity as devoted
outside of New York? We only know it is ratings-wise."
Stern is frequently dismissed, by liberals and
conservatives alike, as a sexist, a racist, and a
narcissist. But he is one of the most influential
entertainers in America, particularly among the
much-sought-after 18-to-25-year-old male demographic.
His show is a critical stop for actors plugging
youth-market movies, and his skits serve as the
blueprint for many reality TV concepts. Last month, in
an effort to borrow some of Stern's mojo, Jay Leno
hired Stern sidekick "Stuttering John" Melendez to be
an announcer and correspondent on "The Tonight Show."
Harrison says that Stern's audience is broader than
most people realize. "They're not just 18-year-old,
beer-drinking yahoos. They're 20- and 30- and
40-something professionals. They're mainstream
American citizens who are well-educated and affluent
and socially active and politically interested, though
not politically active. But they're being motivated.
Wouldn't that be amazing if millions of people vote
who otherwise wouldn't, because of this issue?"
"Some people will dismiss Stern not because they don't
believe he has a following, but because they believe
his listeners don't vote," Todd says. "I would argue
that a swing voter is just that; they swing between
not voting and voting, not between the two parties. So
if he brings some nonvoters to the polls, then that's
a big impact."
Over the years, Stern has occasionally taken political
positions. In the 1994 New York gubernatorial
election, he briefly ran as the Libertarian Party
candidate, before withdrawing and endorsing Republican
George Pataki. "One could argue that he had an effect
on that New York governor's race, that he was an
impact player," Todd
says. And until recently, Stern was supportive of Bush
and the decision to go to war in Iraq. But Stern has
never come out so relentlessly for or against a
politician, and he is best known as someone who would
just as soon joke about flatulence and prostitution as
take on the government. His anti-Bush push began in
earnest after the FCC crackdown on "indecency"
inspired Clear Channel -- which he calls "Fear
Channel" -- to remove his show from six cities the
week of Feb. 23. While those markets form a relatively
small portion of his audience, the punitive action
threw Stern for a loop. And his outrage has boiled to
a head with news that Congress is currently
considering a radical increase in the amount of FCC
indecency fines (from a maximum of $27,500 to
$500,000).
"It's over," Stern said on the air Tuesday. "When the
Senate passes that bill, it's over. The show is over.
. . . We can't do a radio program that's cutting edge
. . . if the government keeps second-guessing
everything we do."
Stern is also maintaining that Clear Channel dropped
him last month not because of indecency but because of
some of his Bush criticism earlier in the year.
"There's a real good argument to be made that I
stopped backing Bush and that's when I got kicked off
Clear Channel," he said on the air earlier this month.
"When he takes that FCC persecution mantle and wraps
it around his political views," says Mark Walsh, CEO
of Air America, "and when he implies that it wasn't
until he started to criticize this president that he
really started getting nailed for `immorality' and
`obscenity,' he throws gasoline on the fire.
"If he says, `I'm being stifled because I have the
temerity to challenge this president,' and `Remember a
year and a half ago when entertainers were chastised
for questioning the war and now I'm getting nailed for
the same thing,' if he starts pounding that drum, I
would contend that a significant portion of his
listenership will take that as gospel truth."
"He is self-aggrandizing if he thinks he's being
singled out here," says Jeffrey Chester, executive
director of the Center for Digital Democracy, a
Washington-based advocacy organization. "Congress is
engaging in this kind of witch hunt generally. I don't
think they're singling out Stern for his alleged
critical comments against the Bush administration."
Whether or not he is being censored for putting down
Bush, the First Amendment issues at stake in his case
remain incendiary. How much is America willing to let
politicians determine what is "decent" and "indecent"?
"It has been this bubbling issue that unites liberals
and conservatives, this free speech stuff," says Todd.
"And it could pop under the right circumstances. It
probably needs a linchpin, the way gay marriage got
its linchpin thanks to the mayor of San Francisco
suddenly issuing marriage licenses. It will need a
seminal moment. Is Stern getting thrown off the air
that moment for this FCC issue? I don't know."
"I'm no fan of Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh and what
I think is the tabloid-esque domination of radio and a
great deal of television," says Chester. "But Congress
is stampeding to censor a whole range of speech."
Chester says it is unclear whether Kerry will indeed
be Stern's "savior," and that "what Stern really
should be doing is trying to get Kerry to be public
and accountable on this."
One thing does seem clear, however. If Stern loses
this battle, his cause will take on added vigor. "Take
Stern off the air because of the government?" says
Harrison. "Take a guy that's a beloved icon and turn
him into a beloved martyr."
Matthew Gilbert can be reached at gilbert@globe.com.
© Copyright 2004 Globe Newspaper Company.
© Copyright 2004 The New York Times Company