Howard Stern: Ex-Free Speech Warrior Sides with Censors
Reformed shock jock ignores Twitter Files, promotes party opposing speech
We’re still wondering what George Carlin would say 16 years after the comedy legend’s death.
Few fought harder for the right to tell jokes without compromise. Like Lenny Bruce before him, Carlin saw the inside of a jail cell for telling “obscene” gags.
What would a free speech warrior like Carlin make of Big Tech censorship? The UK’s attack on social media posts? The Twitter Files?
There’s little doubt about Howard Stern’s take on those subjects. He’s very much alive at 70 and cracks wise three days a week via SiriusXM radio.
And, on any given day, he has precious little to say about the First Amendment. It’s actually worse than that.
Stern, who once fought like hell against the FCC’s speech police, now sides with the government players behind today’s anti-speech movement. The bigger the government, the better for Stern 2.0.
He went “all-in” on COVID-19 protocols, becoming a modern-day Howard Hughes in the process. Instead of rallying behind small business owners forced to shutter their shops, Stern pushed vaccine mandates.
His message to those who questioned pandemic rules that aged so poorly?
Now, the U.S. Government represents a growing threat to free speech, a subject you likely won’t hear on his broadcasts. We’ve since learned that The Twitter Files, an unholy alliance between the Deep State and Big Tech, was only the beginning.
A flicker of the old Stern emerged when Cancel Culture threw everything including the kitchen sink at podcaster Joe Rogan during the pandemic. The “Fear Factor” alum locked horns with rocker Neil Young over COVID-19 protocols.
It was the perfect time for an aging free-speech warrior to defend the new King of All Media. Stern briefly sided with Rogan, but it hardly became a narrative worth his attention.
“I’m against any kind of censorship… I really am. I don’t like censorship.”
Long-time listeners know when a subject gets under Stern’s skin, you’ll hear about it for days on end. Weeks. Months.
In recent years, Stern has looked the other way as the woke mind virus cast a chill over Comedy Nation.
He did a little censoring himself. He unofficially banned comedian Gilbert Gottfried, one of the show’s most popular guests, from the show. He did the same podcast giant Adam Carolla. The former “Loveline” host says Stern disagreed with his COVID-19 views.
Meanwhile, a stand-up generation that grew up listening to Stern grabbed his irreverent baton. Think Tim Dillon, Andrew Schulz, Ryan Long and more. Have any of these rebel comics become regular Stern show guests?
If not, why not?
Stern even proudly declared himself “woke,” ignoring the ominous context behind the phrase. Without woke there is no Cancel Culture.
Earlier this year, Stern threw softballs at President Joe Biden, months before the leader’s dementia-like state became too obvious to deny. Yes, the same president whose team strong-armed social media giants to squelch speech.
The line of questioning never occurred to Stern. He preferred playing lap dog instead.
Now, Stern is all in on Vice President Kamala “Joy and Vibes” Harris. Stern admits he’s an MSNBC addict, so the stance makes sense given his media filter. He even raged against Trump voters, calling them stupid and comparing Trump to Adolf Hitler.
That rant picked up where Stern left off in 2022.
“I’m hoping there is still some more brilliant, bright, vibrant people who love this country … They have never lived under a dictator. Their freedoms have never really been threatened… And they have no idea what it would be like to live under a different type of system other than democracy.”
It sounds a bit like life under a Harris/Walz administration.
Remember when Walz’s police pelted citizens with paintballs to enforce a curfew designed to ebb the “mostly peaceful” protests following George Floyd’s death in 2020?
Democrats are collectively awful on the free speech front.
In a matter of days Harris, VP candidate Tim Walz and former First Lady Hillary Clinton have all threatened free speech.
Harris railed against misinformation in an undated clip that went viral, vowing to use the government to crush it once and for all. She can start with her own rhetoric, which includes provable lies about “very fine people” and “bloodbaths.”
Walz and Clinton echoed those anti-speech sentiments. Clinton brought up potential jail time for sharing misinformation, a comical stance given her ties to the Russian collusion hoax.
Walz argued that so-called “hate speech” isn’t covered by the First Amendment.
It is.
“There’s no guarantee to free speech on misinformation or hate speech.”
— Tim Walz pic.twitter.com/js8WhTpqkt
— The Rabbit Hole (@TheRabbitHole84) September 17, 2024
Democrats are all-in on speech repression. Consider future presidential hopeful California Gov. Gavin Newsom. The progressive star just made it illegal to create political deep fakes, a ruling that critics say would impact A.I.-based political satire in the Golden State.
We’re still waiting for the signature Stern rant on that subject.
Reason magazine weighed in on the Democrats’ stance on speech earlier this year.
The share of U.S. adults who favor government intervention to restrict false information has grown 50 percent in the last five years, and Democrats are nearly twice as likely as Republicans to support that intervention. Democratic state officials are now taking action to urge the Supreme Court to roll back longstanding First Amendment freedoms, belying their party’s claimed commitment to preserving democracy.
The New York Post offered a similarly grim outlook on the party last year.
A Pew Research poll released Thursday found that 70% of Democrats think the government should restrict what appears on social media, a dramatic change from five years ago, when a majority of Democrats supported a free marketplace of ideas.
RELATED: BILL MAHER MOURNS LOSING HOWARD STERN AS FRIEND
Stern has grown past his raunchy brand of yore. He’s older, wiser and aware of how it would look to have a 60-something host throw bologna slices at strippers.
Good for him.
It’s still jarring to see him today and recall how hard he once fought against free speech scolds. Bill Maher is roughly the same age (he’s 68) but makes the fight for free expression an integral part of his work on both HBO and his “Club Random” podcast.
Stern’s epic free speech battles once consumed his broadcasts, captured in his ‘90s era “Crucified by the FCC” box set.
Looking back, Stern’s war footing makes more sense.
At the time, Stern’s battles were to protect his shock jock status. His career was on the line, and he fought back with every syllable he could muster. The government pummeled him with fines. Several radio stations canceled his quasi-syndicated show.
The media licked its chops, framing every defeat as the one to crush Stern’s career.
He never backed down.
Former WYSP Program Director Andy Bloom, who worked with Stern in the early days of Stern’s simulcasting experiment, feted Stern’s comedy as a testament to free speech.
In the years I worked with the Howard Stern Show, some of the most challenging days were when he played “Guess Who’s the Jew,” or had Daniel Carver, the former KKK Grand Dragon, on the show. Carver said some of the nastiest, crudest, and most racist invective on either side of the Mason-Dixon line, and he wasn’t joking.
I believe Stern understood that by having Carver on, he showed him to be the ignorant, uneducated jackass he was. He was much less scary after Howard (Jewish) and Robin (African American) stood toe-to-toe with him and pushed back. Somewhere along the line, I think — I don’t know, that even Carver had to stop hating, at least as much, and started doing it as an act.
Sunshine, then and now, is the best disinfectant.
Now, with several SiriusXM contracts in the bank, Stern can afford to let others fight the free speech battles. The checks have cleared. His legacy is secure.
Is it?
We still pine for Carlin’s wisdom on free speech. Carlin never sold out or betrayed his core values. He grew crustier in his final years, a misanthropic streak curdling his best lines.
You still never doubted his principles. It’s why we wonder what he’d say about the latest headlines. We’d listen, take notes and know he had the First Amendment’s back.
Always.
We can’t say the same about Stern. We’re in a once-in-a-generation fight to protect free speech, a battle spreading across the globe. He’s uniquely situated to take a stand and use his clout to preserve speech for future generations.
Instead, Stern is ride or die with a party that embraces censorship.
1) Howard Stern HAS become boring but not because he’s become woke. He grew up. People do that. When a person grows up it isn’t because they get rich per se. It’s because they have more time to think and reflect on something other than their own career. Their purpose changes. And sadly their fire often goes away. Personally, I can hardly listen to Howard anymore because a grown up is less fun to listen to than a petulant child irritating grown ups.
2) Howard was a rebel. But he wasn’t stupid. His comedy wasn’t about lying. It was about exposing hypocrisy. And laughing at people whose truths were insane and evil. Daniel Carver would tell racist lies and believed them. Howard exposed Carver by letting him come on the show and say his ridiculous hateful crap. Right to Robin even. And the audience could tell that Daniel, in his own small way, wasn’t hating with the same vigor e was when he started. It felt like he grew to like Jewish Howard and black Robin — because he got to know them. Daniel was still a complete moron and that never changed…but he lost his fire to a degree. And he was less funny.
3) The analogy to Howard Stern promoting free speech then but suppressing it now is flawed. In the old days Howard made fun of liars and racists. He lashed out at stuffy pencil pushing corporate hacks and executives who wanted to crush comedic free speech in order to court advertisers. He lashed out at politicians for being spineless cowards.
Today, the corporate hacks are still doing it. They are not calling out flat out liars but instead courting them for ad dollars.
Fox News didn’t lose the defamation suit because Tucker was a truth-telling pillar of virtue, crushing “the man” with his brute honesty. It was the opposite. The things he was saying were flat out lies. And his internal texts proved that he didn’t want the truth to stand in the way of upsetting audience. He knew then and knows now is zero evidence the election was stolen. The old Howard wasn’t supporting liars. He was fighting for truth.
Fox News exists in order to promote false information that is gobbled up by misinformed viewers. Fox wants those ad dollars. These are viewers who BELIEVE that voting machines were successfully tampered with. And Fox goes right along with it.
This is NOTHING like the old Howard Stern. The fact that Howard effectively says “If you are stupid enough to believe in a fairy tale that voting machines cost Trump an election that he lost fair and square, “F*** off. Listen to another show, I’m too successful to worry about entertaining you. I don’t need ratings. I hate you because of your incredible stupidity ”
Entertaining? Not really. But as honest and truthful as the old Howard? Yup.
I was a huge fan of Stern back in the 90’s. He was funny and irreverent. His humor was crude but what really was his attraction is that he was unfiltered and raw. He fought to have that right to speak his mind and we were right there along with him with that fight. I stopped listening to Howard years ago when he started getting political. He stopped being funny. He was in it for the paycheck only and you could tell. Howard turned on his audience that made him famous and he took the fame he once had for granted. Gutfeld is right. He turned into what he hated most. Don Imus.
He did WORSE than become Don Imus; Imus was still capable of being funny.
No, Stern became Bob Grant.
Agreed. While Imus was nothing great toward the end, every once in a while I’d tune into his CNBC broadcast and it wasn’t bad. These days you couldn’t drag me near anything Stern has to say
Imus is now dead so he isn’t capable of being funny any longer
Yeah, I was sad to hear about Imus’ passing years ago. I guess that Imus is getting the last laugh in his feud with Stern. Even though he’s dead Imus is less of a bore than Stern is now
Agree. He was naughty and sometimes especially gross, but he was pretty funny. Since Covid he has turned into a p*ssy afraid of going outside. He has bad TDS and he’s one I cannot stomach anymore.
“A bell’ is spot on. I’d add that Howard is a typical American Jew holding all the psitions that make life harder for Jews everywhere who are neither rich nor American…
I don’t understand how anyone who’s Jewish can still align with the Democrats after 10/7
Because in their minds it happened to someone else, not to they themselves.
They’re stuck on stupid.
Stern was only interested in free publicity (any coverage is good). As always, he’s only interested in free speech that is his. Many 60s hippies have been shown to have the same self interest. Defy the man unless I am the man!
As @Iowahawk said during the Obamacare debate way back when, something to the effect of, “The people who used to protest The Man have become more of The Man than The Man they were protesting ever was.”
Gone are the days of battling against Pig Vomit and the stuffy suits at WNBC, the “new woke” Howard Stern is the one banning speech from his show. It’s not surprising if you fully understand that Ivan Reitman was the magic behind “Private Parts”, not Stern.
Fun fact: “Pig Vomit” was a name concocted for the “Private Parts” book/movie. Even then, Stern was a huge fan of historical revisionism.
On air, in real life, he would refer to then-program director Kevin Metheney as “Pig Virus”, not “Pig Vomit.”
Also, Stern was not at WNBC, it was “Double You EhNNNN Bee Cee!”. I was lucky enough to be in the NY radio market.
And I could be remembering wrong, but I though that Pig Virus was John Hayes?
No, I think John Hayes was John Hayes. I don’t immediately recall him having a pet name for Hayes; I think he still had enough sense / not enough pull to call the Boss boss anything. TOM CHIUSANO, on the other hand…
Although he WAS pissed that Hayes was buying lunches for friends who worked at competitor WABC. Recall his song parody “Money for Douchebags”, which was referenced in Stern’s “Miss America” (?) but the lyrics were rewritten in the book to be less harsh to Hayes etc. Historical revisionism at work.
I do remember Money for Douchebags!
“We’re only pullin’.
15 million
While Hayes goes to lunch with his friends at ABC..”
Yes. The “While Hayes buys lunches…” line didn’t make the final cut in the book.
And as a long time fan you’re no doubt aware that Stern sanitized the “‘Gina Girl” character. The real ‘Gina Girl was mentally retarded (“Gina dance! Naked dance! Dustin Hoffman!”) ; in the “Miss America” book she was someone else entirely. I recall Stern retrofitting the name to a different woman who wasn’t screwed in the head, again in an effort to rewrite show history.
“You either die a hero, or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain”. Such a great line that is proven correct more and more as the years go by. The mystic of the 60s have been destroyed due to so many of the “rebels” being nothing more then corporate and big government sellouts. Same can be said of the people from the 90s. Stern was nothing more then a hack and his legacy will forever be tainted.
He treated Gilbert Gottfried like trash. And if Sam Kinison had lived long enough, he would have s-canned him as well.
And remember when Billy West (Ren & Stimpy, Futurama) was doing voices on the Stern show? How many hours of West saying the hard-R N word are there online because Stern had him say it on-air, ONLY to have Stern do a 180° years later and denounce such talk?
My favorite Billy West skit had to be Larry from The Three Stooges at Woodstock
“Please don’t eat the brown acid!”
“Oh boy, it’s beautyful! (sic) It’s beautyful! Hey, who’s THAT ugly broad? ‘Janet Joplin’? I wouldn’t f___ her with SHEMP’s d___!”
I’m warning you, don’t eat the brown acid!
I had long hair before any of you jerkoffs
Please don’t eat the brown acid
And somebody find me a whore!
” It’s getting to the POINT… where I’m no fun.. anymore…”