Howard Stern has not been missed since he took his smutty shtick off the airwaves and onto the unregulated Sirius satellite radio. His super fans — the brainiacs still playing their VHS tapes of a Stern show called "Butt Bongo Fiesta" — have made the satellite radio chiefs happy, but Stern has almost vanished as an icon of pop culture. He even scaled back his radio schedule to three days a week, semi-retiring.
So why in the blazes would NBC make the decision to revive his career by bringing him on as a judge of their summer talent show "America's Got Talent," a family show watched by millions of children? They knew exactly what they were buying. They just never stop believing that shock will sell.
NBC isn't exactly "must-see TV" any more. AP television writer David Bauder noted last month that 10 years ago, NBC was scoring 28 million viewers for "ER" and 22 million for "Friends" on Thursdays in April. Now its Thursday lineup has trouble cracking the 3 million mark.
The Parents Television Council sent a warning shot across the bow to advertisers that this family show would probably see a major increase in explicit content. Stern and his fans thought it was absurd to prejudge his performance before it aired — as if Stern wouldn't be utterly predictable keeping in line with his career.
Take, for example, the recent "Time 100" article he wrote honoring NBC morning host Matt Lauer. He said he and his wife would like a "threesome" with Annette Lauer, and then added, "Hey, I'm Howard Stern, and I need to throw something inappropriate into everything I do." But somehow we shouldn't prejudge Stern.
This new NBC gig allowed the "critics" to bow slavishly toward all the "accomplishments" of the self-anointed "King of all Media." Bill Carter of The New York Times began a splashy Sunday profile by noting how "radio notoriety" pays. "If anyone has a right to feel on top of the world, it's Howard Stern — especially inside his elegant, cumulus-high apartment on the West Side of Manhattan.
... This is the aerie of a hugely successful man, which certainly describes Mr. Stern."
Washington Post TV critic Hank Stuever found only triumph in Stern's late career. "He's richer than he ever dreamed of. And although he still likes to think of himself as a marginalized provocateur, the fact is that the Howard Stern of the 1980s and '90s has been fully validated. He poked and prodded America into frank conversations about gender, sex, bodily functions, politics, culture, art. He triumphed over his real and imagined oppressors." How go your frank conversations about bodily functions?
Oily Stern super fans made fools of themselves on television. On CNN, former "Mork and Mindy" sidekick Jay Thomas mocked the PTC and honored Stern as the sage of our age.
"He is the richest and smartest entertainer of our time. He knows exactly what he's doing. He certainly is not going to do anything like me here on national television. He's not going to do anything untoward," Thomas insisted. "And I think that NBC should send a $1 million dollar contribution to the Parents Council. They have added millions of people to watching 'America's Got Talent.'"
Wrong and wrong. In his first show, Stern had to talk about the size of his sex organ to a male dancer: "I was rooting for you, but all I saw was a guy with a small package. Don't worry; I'm in the same boat! But as a stripper, you can't have man boobs." Stern also mocked a bad singer who when he said his parents had died, Stern asked if they "died of embarrassment."
What matters to the cultural nihilists is one thing only (they say): Ratings. So guess what? After all the hype, it didn't work — again. "America's Got Talent" scored a 3.6 average rating in the key 18-49 demographic, down significantly from last year's 4.3 for the season premiere.
The promoters of sleaze and sensationalism can't stand criticism, so their first line of defense is to insist that any criticism from "moralists" is only going to boost viewership. If moralists believed that, they would never speak up against anything. So far, the Stern gambit looks like NBC's "biggest loser." And that says something.
L. Brent Bozell III is the president of the Media Research Center. To find out more about Brent Bozell III, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.
COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM
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Sir;... You guys have no idea of what morality is... Like the churches, you ride morality rather than carry it forward... It is moral to stand up for your fellow citizens and to demand justice for all... It is moral to say my family, friends, and country first...There is even a certain arguable morality in enduring a little injustice for the sake of peace...It is moral to be bound by the laws of the country and the constitution because we were born to people who accepted them...And these are but examples because as with all moral forms; no clear definition of morality can be arrived at because you cannot define forms infinite in the expression...
Moral forms are not like physical forms... They are so many meanings without being... A book, a wall, a world are physical forms having both meaning and being...Because our moral forms, like equality, justice, peace, life, liberty, happiness have meaning, we instituted our government as a social and physical form to help us to achieve these virtues... But if one man learns to exploit another, to literally wrong him, and count on his moral forms to keep him quiet, that one is actually teaching him an extreme and immoral individualism...
To live in a world controlled by the rich, who manage the power of government is the see the meaning drained out of our moral forms which are only meanings to begin with.. We say God; and God is a moral form, a meaning... And to give that moral form being we join in testimony that God is real... But to see the privilages of the churches, bought with the blood of millions of real people turned to the destruction of our liberty under the principal that only God can grant a right, and a mere majority of people can refuse it is a demeaning and demoralizing experience...
If rights are not secure, then upon what base does privilage exist???...In fact, privilage always comes out of our store of rights, and at the expense of rights which are powers, and the less of powers the people have the less they can defend themselves from predation or attack...
Now; I do not need a network to tell me that Mr. Sterns has the right to express himself in any possible manor... It is in defense of his rights that mine are protected... But the privilage to broadcast is one granted by the whole people, that is given over like most of the commonwealth, for next to nothing... Can the people not a least demand that truth come out of the public airwaves, since the knowledge of truth is so essential to life and happiness???
The freedom of speech does not include the freedom to lie... I am a moralist; and I do not want to be a truth cop... But it does not take a cop to realize that if people are passing off lead for gold the whole people will soon be broke...If no one tells the truth, not fathers to their children, husbands to their wives, or the government to the people; then there is not enough of lawyers and prisons in the world to make thing right...For the truth to have meaning we have to give it value, and consider it as a thing of value, and hold people accountable if they destroy and demean the truth...
If churches cannot see how immoral they are, how in trampling on rights they ruin the case for their privilage, then they are blind with power...What if God gave them the privilage of attacking our rights if we do not defend their privilage to do so??? If the churches have religious liberty which is the freedom to attack at will the ideas they eschew, shall they be given the larger pulpet of the airwaves to prey upon the old, the infirm, and the idle brained???
They do not pay taxes, and encourage no one to pay taxes, attack the power of government to do good because they are not the source of it, and support the wealthy as they have everywhere, and always done... They are immoral... They want their members to sell their rights for a promise of salvation, and the fact that they can convince so many, and that the rest of us allow it means none of us are fit for salvation or liberty... Only moral people are capable of liberty... The most immoral we kill or imprison... But that is only the poorest of those who feed on the body politic without moral impediment...
If you believe in God; fine... But government is for reasonble people to consider the future and the best course by which to reach an acceptable future condition...We are in most of the crap we are in; internationally, domestically, and locally because churches in their old age allianace with the rich has forced a rule over people rather than the control of events in a rational fashion -to be the dominant theme of government... They are immoral...
Anybody can act out of emotion or faith, but to be social one must also be rational...To self govern one must respect rights claimed that cause no obvious harm to society...To be a democracy we must recognize that all rights are inalienable, but the privilages granted by the constitution, which may once have serve a purpose have long since worked against us...Where rights are equal, so is wealth; but with economic injustice one has political and social injustice; even sexual injustice... And it is out of the inequality of rights that inequality of wealth results, and in the face of hunger, poverty, and hoplessness; inalienable rights find their price...For those people who feel they have a deal with God, to sell out our rights with a majority vote is immoral...
You can give up your rights and become a slave... It is immoral, but not as yet, illegal.. But if you have surrendered your liberty to some earthly authority empowered by the government with privilage, you do not even have the right to speak on the nature of rights or morality...The word Christian means a slave to Christ...An army of such slaves has not the right of one free man in a moral society...All such slaves can do is lead us in demoralization...Thanks...Sweeney
Comment: #1
Posted by: James A, Sweeney
Sat May 19, 2012 6:37 AM
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You, sir, need to get your meds checked.
Comment: #2
Posted by: TruthInAction
Mon May 21, 2012 3:29 AM
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