| T O P I C R E V I E W |
| Bean |
Posted - March 25 2004 : 11:28:10 AM
Concerning Howard Stern ( ref: Danny Schechter Opinion article, Wednesday Newsday 3/24/04)
Let's get it out of the way right up front: I like Howard Stern. However I probably like Howard for a completely different reason than most males my age (50) and younger. I also don't listen to Stern religiously and don't find him funny or entertaining all the time. Even a red blooded American male like myself can only take so much of testosterone powered locker room talk. Conversely I find Stern to be at his peak when he has a mission and goes on a tirade for some political or social cause. Right now his cause is his fight for free speech, along with his anti Bush & FCC onslaught. But what really frightens the government and the powers that be is that he is so "politically incorrect " so to speak that he is actually comes
around to the" common sense " position, in essence making him right and defying logic. This is much like the case with John Lennon in the late 60's when Nixon tried to have him deported for voicing his pro peace / anti-war sentiments
The Bottom line is Howard represents what the common man would really want to say to his elected officials or even to his boss at work, for the absolutely unbelievable " Dilbert " like scenarios that actually occur every day in the corporate and political world. Taking away Stern's voice would be a travesty of justice and one more strike against freedom as we know it. There is no question in my mind that Stern is being singled out and specifically targeted, while others are getting away with doing the same thing or worse. Stern has the power to change the course of political history and they're afraid. I'm not ! God Save Howard Stern the King of all Media.
Howard Stern for Governor of NY, or better Yet President !
Your First Bean
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| 7 L A T E S T R E P L I E S (Newest First) |
| Bean |
Posted - July 08 2004 : 12:08:59 AM
Welcome back Kat ! |
| KatCoconut |
Posted - July 07 2004 : 2:09:11 PM
I agree that it's political censorship, and not morals that are being attacked. Go to my FThe FCC page. www.KatRadio9.com/fthefcc.html I got canned for calling Ashcroft an Asswipe, for discontinuing the goverment's medicinal marijuana program for cancer patients. My boss however, would routinley call the show him self, and ask if we were talking about my vibrater. |
| Bean |
Posted - March 27 2004 : 10:15:24 AM
Published on Wednesday, March 24, 2004 by the Long Island, NY Newsday
Stern's Loose Lips Give Bush the Slip
Shock Jock Launches an Air War Against the Administration that puts his Politics on the Offensive
by Danny Schechter
What's with Howard Stern? Has he finally gone too far by daring to become political?
The long-haired, big-mouthed self-promoting shock jock - who calls himself the "King of All Media" - had in recent years become a cartoon of a caricature of the sexually obsessed boobologist, well before Janet Jackson's Super Bowl stunt bared her you-know-what. When that incident led to investigations of on-air obscenity, Stern went from being a controversial object of the objectionable to a target for the conservative campaign demanding we "do something" to clean up the airwaves.
In short order, Clear Channel stations dropped his show from six stations and started a radio war that some say has turned the airwaves into a political battleground.
Overnight, politicians who had been complaining about too much broadcast regulation insisted on more regulation. And Stern quickly became the poster boy for what offended them the most. His in-your-face-attitude quickly became the issue, his outrageous program a target. Just last week the Federal Communications Commission fined Howard Stern $27,500 for a program broadcast in July 2001 on a Detroit station.
As the specter of a threatening reality intruded into the adolescent fantasy world Stern created for his largely male audience, The Howard began firing up his followers - just as The Donald was firing his. Suddenly an apolitical libertine was on a political crusade for civil liberties.
If hell hath no fury like a woman scorned, hell really has no fury like a rebuffed Howard Stern. He is on the warpath - driven by his oversized ego to be sure, but also because of his own commitment to being able to say what he wants - and his listeners want to hear. Ego may be driving him, but Stern is speaking up at a time when so many others in the media world are succumbing to the dictates of censorship and self-censorship. His larger-than-life celebrity is turning him into a high-profile fighter for freedom of speech and a formidable force - if he keeps it up - in the culture wars.
Reuters reports that Stern has "as of this month become the anti-Rush Limbaugh. If the Republicans ever worried what it might be like to have a left-leaning version of Limbaugh hacking them to bits, now they are finding out daily."
With 8½ million listeners (and acolytes) in the white-male demographic so prized by the White House, Stern has turned into an adversary considered dangerous by the very Republicans he had once supported. In his few past forays into on-air politics, he backed Republican governors Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey and George Pataki in New York. He backed the Iraq war and did his share of waving the flag.
But now Stern is on a tear, tearing into President George W. Bush, calling him a "maniac" and an "arrogant bastard," and mobilizing his listeners to take on Bush's Christian right base. Fans as far away as Australia are circulating posters that put Stern's face in Jesus' place on the cross with headlines that speak of "The Passion of The Stern." He is becoming a martyr even as his message seems to be winning support and attention.
"If Stern falls, we all fall" is the mantra of some of his fans. It seems as if they will not abandon him even as some news columnists (and I am sure some of his bosses) want him to get back to being funny, not furious.
Personally, as a former rock radio news director/dissector at a station he later appeared on, I was not expecting Howard Stern to emerge as a warrior for de-Bushifying America. I always found his angry attitude and sexist antics a calculated shtick to turn him from a Long Island boychik into a national bad boy who lived on the adulation of his fans and his ever-expanding ego.
As he built his own persona, he was used skillfully (and enriched significantly) when Infinity (a Viacom subsidiary) syndicated his show and in the process decapitated local radio talent and more community-service oriented programming at rock stations nationwide. Stern's talent was to dumb it down and sex it up at the same time. I never liked that.
But now, in an age when no one knows what will come next, Howard Stern's intensity and talent could give the anti-Bush movement and radio listeners a voice that it has long missed: someone who connects with working-class males and knows how to temper his earnestness with humor. And someone who also stands up for the right thing, just as Larry Flynt has struck a blow for the First Amendment against other know-nothings.
As a long-time Howard- hater, I am prepared to turn and bow, to pay homage to this "King" if he is really serious about toppling the one in power.
Danny Schechter is the editor of the Web site, Mediachannel.org, and author, most recently, of "Embedded: Weapons of Mass Deception: How the Media Failed to Cover the War in Iraq."
"Copyright Newsday Inc. 2004 "
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| Bean |
Posted - March 26 2004 : 3:57:43 PM
Louis old boy I hate to disappoint you but at the end of my letter I sort of quoted a David Peel song from when Howard Stern was seriously going to run for the Governor of NY a few years back, he had David Peel ( yes the same one we all knew and loved back in the 60's and 70's and that John Produced on Apple for a while " The Pope Smokes Dope ' remember that )anyway as I was saying he had David Peel on his show a few times who was supporting him and David wrote the " Howard Stern for Governor " theme song so technically I did quote a song in my letter...
" Up Against the Wall Motherfcuker....Have a Marajuana....I do my balling in the bathroom...remember those songs?
I heard today that all military and government facilities are filtering out on their web servers so that noone onsite can access the HowardStern.com home web page...and there is absolutely nothing xrated, offensive or sex related on Howards site but they did this since and only because of this whole thing with Bush and the FCC and Howards anti bush and anti FCC tirades and you tell me he is not being singled out and being targeted? Like I said it's just like with Nixon and John Lennon they are just afraid of him and especially of his influence of the 8 to 10 million swing vote listeners he has and can and will be a decisive factor in this coming Election....this is all about everyone's right to " FREE SPEECH " not Howard Stern and you should be worried and scared unless you want the government telling you and deciciding for you what to say or listen to and maybe even watch too. OK here come the song lyrics just not to disappoint you !
" Christ you know it ain't easy
you know how hard it can be
the way things are going they're going to crucify Howard "
The FCC took Howard Away they took him away away from me "
The Politcial Bean on his Soap Box !
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| Cottonmouth |
Posted - March 26 2004 : 12:21:58 PM
I'm proud of you Frank! You managed to write something that doesn't have a single song lyric reference in it! I knew you could do it! All these yeras of waiting have finally paid-off!! |
| Bean |
Posted - March 25 2004 : 11:50:36 PM
GOD SAVE HOWARD STERN
THE KING OF ALL MEDIA ! |
| Artangus |
Posted - March 25 2004 : 10:52:11 PM
I'm a true believer in Howard Stern. Spent most of my years doing plumbing listening to his radio crazy antics.. They always made my morning go by quick! I loved to turn him on and laugh at what he said! Its alway nice the hear someone say it the way he wanted to without being a puppet! He never conformed to what was suppose to be radio! I don't spend much time playing the radio anymore but I think we all owe him the right to do what he has done for the last 20 year. Remember what Ben Franklin said "They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety" I think that says it all! |
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