Howard Stern is sophomoric. He coarsens public discourse. He is crude, lewd and socially unacceptable.
I’ve heard only a few minutes of Stern’s radio program. I can’t change the channel fast enough when I come upon his show on TV. I get a chill up my spine when I think that this guy is so popular.
I wish everyone would follow my example. If enough people turn him off, he goes away. Poof, he’ll lie among the cancelled. I figure I have the right, as a consumer, to vote him into oblivion.
I’d also like to cost the stations that carry him millions.
And I’d like to take the CEOs of the companies that syndicate his program and whip them upside the head with the U.S. Constitution that they so piously cite when chastised by the moral majorities.
So why am I now on Stern’s side?
Because I can do turn him off, and you can do, too. But the FCC can’t. What Powell Jr. is doing is intimidating media companies because the Bushies don’t like what Stern has to say. (I didn’t either, until I heard he was criticizing Bush; but even then, I couldn’t bring myself to listen to him.)
This administration is off the deep end. Next, Stern will wind up in Guantanamo, a victim of the Patriot Act. The FCC didn’t do this, really. I’ll bet the order came from higher up, if you can call anything in the Bush administration higher.