The Daily Stern
: FREE SPEECH JUST GOT DAMNED EXPENSIVE: So the House passed its indecent “indecency” bill. Dolts.
: FROM A REASONABLE MAN: Dan Gillmor says in his newspaper column:
I have some advice for Howard Stern, whose radio talk show just got dropped by a big broadcasting company. Ditch those bozos, who are too spineless for words. Go to the Internet and satellites, radio’s last bastions of free speech.
: ADVERTISERS LOYAL: Advertisers are sticking with Stern:
Howard Stern is in hot water again, but the shock jock’s advertisers are standing by their man.
Purveyors of everything from diet pills to tax advice say they will continue to buy air time on Stern’s show, despite the Federal Communications Commission’s crackdown on indecency and a decision by the nation’s largest radio broadcaster, Clear Channel Communications Inc., to suspend the show from six of its stations.
Advertisers say they are sticking with Stern because his show attracts an important audience: young men.
Bush, beware.
: POLITICAL FALLOUT: Eric Boehlert in Salon examines the political consequences of the culture war for the Republicans now that Stern is in the fight:
Declaring a “radio jihad” against President Bush, syndicated morning man Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the White House are shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and one they never saw coming.
The pioneering shock jock, “the man who launched the raunch,” as the Los Angeles Times once put it, has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the influence and national reach Stern has….
Stern had strongly backed Bush’s war on Iraq, but in the past two weeks, he has derided the president as a “Jesus freak,” a “maniac” and “an arrogant bastard,” while ranting against “the Christian right minority that has taken over the White House.”…
Boehlert also points out that Stern’s audience is sizable (and I have heard bigger numbers than he uses):
By way of comparison, that’s more than the number of morning viewers at any given time watching Fox News, CNN and MSBNC — combined.
“There’s no question,” says Harrison, “Stern is the sleeping giant of liberal radio.”
: FROM ALL SIDES: Conservatives have stuck up for Stern and free speech. But leftits are coming to the cause, too. Granted, that’s in great measure because Stern is now bashing Bush. But if the most politically correct are defending the least politically correct, well, that tells you something. Hell, even Alternet and Ted Rall (and let me remind you I’m certainly no fan of either) are defending war-loving, death-penalty-pushing, raw-and-ribald Stern. Talk about the oddest possible bedfellows. Here’s Rall. And here’s Alternet on the political fallout:
It seems that President Bush’s “culture war” may finally succeed where Operation Iraqi Freedom did not. Namely, W and Rove’s latest foray seems sure to find those long-sought-after WMDs. Weapons of Mass Destruction? No, not them. I’m talking about White Male Defectors, voters who four years ago responded favorably to Bush’s no-nonsense, common man veneer, but now find themselves alienated by his increasingly expansive religious agenda and his assaults on the Bill of Rights.
: PREVIOUS STERN POSTS: here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here.
