[lbo-talk] Stern

Dennis Perrin dperrin at comcast.net
Fri Apr 13 15:17:50 PDT 2007



> The WSWS <http://wsws.org/articles/2007/apr2007/imus-a13.shtml>
> writes of Imus: "He is, moreover, just one in a long line (Howard
> Stern, Rush Limbaugh, Jerry Springer, etc.) who has been used to drag
> public discourse to the lowest possible level." Is this fair? I
> haven't heard a lot of Stern, but though he can be rude and crude, he
> can also be funny. Am I getting insensitive?
>
> Doug

Stern can be and has been very funny. And very crude. At times sophomoric. As I put it at that thing I do:

"Then there's someone like Howard Stern, who is less relevant these days, now that his tired routines are restricted to satellite radio. But when he was coming up, from WNBC-AM in the early 80s through his prime K-Rock years after the Peacock fired him, Stern played with and mocked racial attitudes across the board. At times he cut so close to the bone that it was difficult to know whether or not he was racist himself, and it was this uncertainty that gave his humor added edge.

"I must confess that I didn't appreciate Stern until he was well-established, at least on the east coast. Though I lived in New York all through the 80s, I never listened to his show, taking the word of some white liberal friends that Stern hated all non-whites, women and gay men, while he exploited lesbians for cheap laughs. It wasn't until I came across his Saturday night TV show in 1990 that I realized how simplistic my friends' dismissal was. While uncomfortable with some of his humor, I could see that there was more going on than mere race or sex baiting: Stern took an anarchistic approach to tribalism in general, rooted to his own confused upbringing in a largely black neighborhood. It was easily the most honest satirical take on racism I'd ever seen -- not perfect, not always funny, but clear and direct. And it reminded me why one should never trust a liberal when it comes to comedy that you've never seen. If it causes a lib any unease, chances are good that they'll hate it and insist you hate it, too."

There's more guff, plus a video of Stern's "Guess Who's The Jew," a very funny spoof of racial profiling, here (scroll down):

<http://redstateson.blogspot.com/2006/12/laughing-at-or-with-hate.html>

Dennis San



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