Private Parts (52 page)

Unfortunately, my triumph as numero uno radio personality has been ruined by the actions of a bunch of sexually repressed lunatics who, in the name of "decency," are trying to destroy the most fundamental human right Americans enjoy: the right to begin your mornings listening to the "Howard Stern Show."

Throughout my career, I have been dogged by prudes who probably want me to butt bongo them, but instead they spend their day running to the Federal Communications Commission to monitor my every erotic move.

I think my shit little show actually turns them on and they don't know what to do about all the sexual energy they feel. So instead of masturbating and having a good time, which any normal person would do, they fucking write letters:

Dear Sirs:

Between 6:45 and 7:00 A.M. on August 1 2, radio station WWDC-FM in Washington, D.C., released a transmission in which the on-air personality named Howard Stern encouraged a female caller to take nude pictures of herself and send them to him. ... As I write this mildly vitriolic

missive I hear the same Stern singing doggerel about passing gas and large-breasted Cubans. ... I can't passively accept the fact that the license to broadcast includes the right to solicit nude photos. I can't even make the distinction between that and Dan Rather asking for a blowjob on the late news.

Dear Sirs:

Fartman was bad enough, but this morning at 7:10 A.M. on my way home from an early-morning swim practice with a sixth-grader and two seventh-graders in my car, I was treated to the moans and groans of Mr. Ed (a horse) having intercourse with his owner's wife. . . . This program has no redeeming social value.

Dear Congressman:

... I am usually in my car with my children when the "Howard Stern Show" comes on the air. It doesn't take very long for him to start talking about sex, and as a practice, I turn him off. On one occasion, however, my children were not with me and I left the show on just to see how bad it would get. Until that time I never realized that hard-core radio pornography actually existed. Howard Stern was arranging a blind date for a black woman named Brenda, who was in his studio, and a man who telephoned, named Lars. When I tuned in, Howard was discussing the physical attributes of Brenda. He said she had white features and one of her ancestors must have been had by a white slave master. He also said that he figured her to be a D cup. Then Howard asked Lars if he makes love to little boys. That was the finish for me. Howard Stern's sense of humor is more than warped, it is
sick.
To mention men making love to little boys, in fun, makes that type of behavior more acceptable. . . .
Something must be done!

Dear Mr. Bon Garten

WNBC General Manager:

Mr. Howard Stern, an announcer I was not familiar with before this day, was on the air on the afternoon of March 1 between the hours of 3:00 P.M. and 5:00 P.M. He and his female sidekick carried on a conversation in which they discussed at great length the new sponge contraceptive that had just reached the New York market. Mr. Stern was quite graphic in describing the possibilities of using a Handi-wipe "stuffed up there" instead of a contraceptive, saying it was a "quicker picker upper." In addition, Mr. Stern and sidekick had a conversation with a young girl

who had called into the studio concerning her boyfriend's ability to "keep it up" from ten to thirty minutes.

All this was on air, Mr. Bon Garten, while I was riding in a cab from Kennedy airport to my office in Manhattan. I was being driven by a man who was clearly not balanced. We were locked in bumper-to-bumper traffic for two hours during which time he harassed me continuously and threatened to kill me. It was a medallion cab with no partition between front and back and the locks on the doors were controlled by the driver. Believe me, it is difficult to re-create the terror I felt being locked up with a man who was big, mean, and seemingly ready to hurt someone -- and I was the one who was there.

Please add to this situation, already chilling, the presence on the radio of your Mr. Stern and the conversation outlined above. My driver was physically aroused by this conversation. He was moaning and giggling and turning to look at me face-to-face every few minutes. In addition, he adjusted his rear-view mirror so that I was in full view all the time. Two hours is a long time, Mr. Bon Garten, to be in this situation and to try to stay calm.

I strongly believe you should be aware of this man being part of the audience that Mr. Stern is reaching. The contents of his conversation aided and abetted a terrifying situation controlled by an unpredictable person. I believe this occurrence shows rather tragically the heavy responsibility that the media carries and must constantly reassess. I have reported this incident to the police and to the Taxi and Limousine Commission. I am also sending a copy of this letter to the FCC.

"I don't have any doubt that the coarsening of the minds of young children by listening to this kind of stuff can have a very serious consequence on children."
-- John Silber, president, Boston University, who has recently been questioned on his ethics

Now you know why I'm the most dangerous man in America. Because somewhere out there some man is rubbing his penis while driving a cab and
I'M
to blame!
I'M
the troublemaker!
I'M
responsible for these lunatics and their wacked behavior! What kind of a shithead writes a letter like this? I don't want to live in the same country as a woman like this.

But the letters go on.

Dear Senator Bradley:

I refer specifically to a radio broadcast I heard on WNBC-AM. The person hosting the show was named Howard Stern. He started to discuss

the size of his penis and of the others who were in the restroom with him; whereupon he challenged the men in the control room at the station to drop their pants to see who had the largest penis. He even chided one man concerning the size of his penis and suggested that the reason his wife didn't wait up for him at night was because it was too small!

Mr. Bradley, I'm so sorry to have had to type the above, believe me, I never thought those statements would come out of my typewriter, but there is just no other way to report it.

The FCC is aware of this situation, but has not lifted
a
finger to stop it. What is their function? Are they not there to protect us from such a cancer as this man?

The answer to that question, at least until 1987, was no.

And then the shit hit the fan. And old Howie started racking up fines the way Charles Barkley does points. It used to be that as long as I didn't say the famous "seven dirty words," I was cool. Here they are: SHIT, PISS, CUNT, FUCK, COCKSUCKER, MOTHERFUCKER, and TITS. Anybody pass out? Anybody never hear these before?

I heard them all by the fifth grade. Then the rules changed. The new rule is: Don't say anything that is "patently indecent" or offensive

to your community. What does that mean? No one knows what it means. But I do know that I live and work in a community where priests rape young boys, where pit bulls chew through kids' heads, where you get shot in your car, where an angry black mob stabbed a Hasidic Jew and the mayor turned his back, where crack runs free like the River Ganges, and where movie directors fuck their wives' daughters.
Now you tell me what I should talk about on the radio!!
Somehow saying the word
testicles
pales in comparison.

But the FCC bureaucrats got on me anyway. They soon realized that they were getting a lot of attention from the press, something they loved. They started paying attention to this irritating man, a minister from Tupelo, Mississippi, named Donald E. Wildmon, who claimed I was singlehandedly leading America straight to hell because I was doing satire of a sexual nature for four hours a morning on a radio program that this celebrity-seeking nothing couldn't even hear down in Mississippi. What was going through his mind? Was he hearing the cash registers ringing because of all those rubes who empty their savings accounts to support his ridiculous morality-in-America campaign?

This Wildmon character is the same guy who led a protest against Mighty Mouse cartoons because he claimed they promoted cocaine use when Mighty Mouse would sniff some flowers to rejuvenate his superhero powers. This is the same Wildmon who picketed the TV show "Taxi" because he claimed it was "overtly sexual." And it probably
was
... to his puny little mind. This is the same mindset that led Jimmy Swaggart to campaign against
Penthouse
being carried by 7-Eleven stores because he
personally
knew that when you see pictures of
nekkid wimmen
you just want to go out and pick up
a ugly hooker widda hairy butt
and take her to a hotel room and jerk off while she fingers herself. Just because Jimmy Swaggart and other idiots like him can't control their carnal impulses, they want to regulate what the rest of us can do.

So this bald minister from Mississippi decided to orchestrate a national letter-writing campaign to the FCC to report me. He sent out a flyer to his faithful flock urging them to report my every romantic move to the FCC.

Meanwhile, after his whole heavily promoted campaign, the FCC got just three tapes complaining about me -- one from a woman in Philadelphia and the other two from Wildmon himself! Some campaign.

Because of these three complaints, in April of 1987 the FCC took a closer look at me and decided that I was about the worst thing they'd ever heard on radio, that I, Howard Stern, had singlehandedly ruined the planet and everything on it. Where there were feces, I wallowed in them. Where there were breasts, I dared to play with them. If there was a problem with lesbians, I dared to lick it. You get the idea. They said I was offensive. They gave me a
warning.

This warning encouraged every kook in the universe to come out of the woodwork and report me. Reporting Howard Stern to the FCC became the second most popular sport in America, next to reporting me to my sponsors.

If you wanted fame and power, if you wanted your name in the paper, if you wanted to appear on "Nightline," you could report me to the FCC.

ENTER MISS ANNE M. STOMMEL, SPINSTER.

It was Wednesday, December 14,1988. We were planning our guest list for our gala Christmas party, which included the usual cast of characters: lesbians, strippers, mental patients, low-lifes, a guy who was going to play the piano with his penis, everyone Jesus loves. After I left work that day, Anne Stommel called the radio station to complain.

I think she felt we were anti-American, anti-Christian, anti-God, and pro-Communist because she didn't like my Christmas party guest list. I couldn't wait to call her when I came in the next morning.

"Anne, you're on the air. Welcome to our radio show. Please don't say anything obscene or dirty," I cautioned.

"Who are you going to invite to the Christmas party? I wonder if you invite these kind of people to a Hanukkah party ... it must be rollicking," she said.

I believe that in her mind we were blaspheming her high holy day. If I had invited strippers up for Hanukkah, I had the feeling she wouldn't have minded.

"What is it, honey?" I asked. "You're a Christian and you think we're being blasphemous to Christmas? What's all this Christmas nonsense with you?" I said. "Wake up and smell the roses, honey! What are you hung up on? What are you afraid of? Who's it gonna hurt? Why don't you go out and help the homeless if you're so Christian?"

"Now, wait a minute." She got feisty. "165 b.c.e. parenthesis,

before the common era, and I used to know that that was before the Christian era..." I was having a difficult time understanding her.

"You're so silly, you're so hung up," I laughed.

"You may be the silly guy. Our society has B.C. and a.d. Even Adam Clayton Powell -- now, you like Negroes -- Adam Clayton Powell said..."

"NEGROES?" I screamed.

"Adam Clayton Powell said the birth of Christ was like a miracle ..."

"Don't you know it's blacks, not Negroes?" I said. It sounded to me as if this woman was a little out of touch. She told me she was sixty-five, she'd never been married, she'd lived her whole life in Monmouth County, New Jersey, and she'd gone to Vassar.

"Oh, now," she continued, "one of your guys said all you have to do if you don't like Howard Stern is to use two fingers. Turn it off. I don't want to turn you off. I want to know what you're doing," she said.

"Oh, so you're going to monitor me," I said.

"I want to know what you're up to," she said. "Talk about freedom of speech, my idea presently is just to copy down the people you're inviting to the Christmas party and I'm going to listen this morning to find out who else you're going to invite and I'm going to write it up because I'm a professional technical writer in communications and electronics."

"You're dangerous is what you are," I said. "I think you've been suppressed your whole life and you love this kind of radio and that's why you can't stop listening. You love it, you love the freedom you're hearing. You wish you were at the Christmas party. You wish
you
were naked serving those drinks ..."

"Oh, go on," she snorted.

"Yes, you do." I was beside myself. "You only wish you were a young voluptuous woman and I was spanking you. That's what you secretly wish for."

Anne M. Stommel, spinster, and I were not getting along. I tried to seduce her with my wit and charm but all she wanted to do was ruin me.

The truth is, I love characters like Anne M. Stommel and I never would have believed that anyone would take her seriously
until
the five stooges at the FCC started listening to her. She was their kind of gal.

"Well, I may write to someone that you like so much, Senator Bill Bradley, who happens to represent me," she said.

"No! You're not going to write to SENATOR BILL BRADLEY because I'm shaking in my pants," I said in mock fright. "Look, Bradley's a senator of the United States because he was a basketball player. People are enamored with basketball players. He's got as much brains as you do."