Serious Stern

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June 17, 2009 | 6:56 pm

“Enough With the Howard!”

Posted by Rob Eshman

Warning: No matter what your opinion of Howard Stern, this blog will offend you.

If you’re not a Howard Stern fan, you’ll wonder why anybody is wasting time writing about someone the media often portrays simply as a foul-mouthed shock jock.

Or, as my wife said last night, “You think that guy is way more important than he is. Enough with the Howard.”

I mean, what kind of show celebrates Father’s Day by giving away a free double “date” with what I’ll euphemistically call a working mom and her equally working daughter. (I got the impression, as I often do, that even some cast members, like Fred Norris, like Howard, didn’t approve. It was wrong. It was bizarre. It was compelling.).

And if you are a Stern fan, you’ll wonder why this blog veers so often toward the serious. Howard’s about giggles and strippers and midgets, right?  If the show were meant to be taken seriously, it wouldn’t offer up mom and daughter hooker teams to married dads.  Who dares to say something serious about that?

Well, I do. And you’re welcome to chime in.

The truth about Howard is that he’s right: he is still, despite his enormous financial success and fame, underrated and neglected as major cultural force.  He is heir of a tradition of outsider satiric comedy that stretches back beyond the shtetl. He is on a pantheon of culture-changers that includes Lenny Bruce, Mort Sahl, Woody Allen and Larry David. As I wrote back in 2004, when the Federal Communications Copmmission was threatening to sue the Stern Show into oblivion:

It isn’t surprising that Stern is caught up in the kind of cultural and political battle in which Jewish comedians and commentators like Mort Sahl and Lenny Bruce once found themselves.
He is heir to the Jewish tradition of the badchen, or shtetl entertainer. “They were scandalous, filled with gossip,” comedian and frequent Stern guest Richard Belzer has said. “Their essence was to expose and make fun of things in their society. The badchen’s society was the shtetl. We expand it to include the whole society.”
“Stern’s is an unleashed id unrepressed by socially approved feelings,” writes Lawrence Epstein in his seminal study of Jewish comedy, “The Haunted Smile.” “He is an attack on society’s right to censor the honest feels of the individual. He is a safety valve, a release.” In as free and democratic medium that exists, 18 million Americans vote for Stern each morning.
The badchen is what Thomas Cahill might call a “Gift of the Jews,” an outsider who exposes society’s foibles, pokes fun at its hypocrisies, makes people laugh and makes people think…

 

But I digress.  I digress because I get defensive talking about Stern—in polite society people who enjoy his show always have to explain themselves.  After many, many years of starting my morning with Stern, I’m up to the task.  Let the blogs begin.

 

4 Comments — Leave your comment

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Wow… you hit it on the head.  I am so tired of having to explain myself in “polite society” about why I love listening to Howard every morning.  And being a woman makes it worse as other women think I’m nuts.  I still do it everytime I mention something interesting that I heard on the show, but it is still annoying!

Comment by Didi on 6/19/09 at 6:10 pm

99 percent of the time, people who say that haven’t listened to him.  You never hear anyone say, “Oh, I used to listen to Howard for months, then I realized how terrible he is.” Most people avoid him based on his reputation, not based on experience.

But 99 percent of the time I just chicken out and don’t mention it.  People are literally shocked and disappointed in me when I tell them.

Comment by Rob Eshman on 6/20/09 at 6:57 pm

As a daily listener to Howard since the early ninties, I think it is great that your blog came to his attention and it is even more cool that for the first time I can remember, he commented that you, Rob, really are able to articulate an accurate understanding of what he is really all about.  I listen to his show for so many reasons.  It keeps me in touch with Pop Culture, I laugh sometimes so hard, it takes a few minutes to catch my breath, and I believe Howard could be the best celebrity interviewer ever.
Rob, some people will just never get it, but for those of us who do, your insights are a welcome new take.

Comment by Ron Rimmon on 6/24/09 at 6:01 pm

Rob,
Thank you for explaining the feelings and giving the reasons for why I am more hooked than ever today to that show sort of like how I was as a kid growing up with wrestling. Now of course people will read and judge me because of I liked wrestling but listening to the HOHS Act II has shown me to realize just how much he had to endure and that whole fab four(RObin, Fred, Gary & Howard) had to put up with and the undying loyalty between them. Howard has matured from those days and alot of people will piss and moan that he lost his edge, jumped the shark , yadayadayaddddaa to them I say Phooey! He is a seasoned vet and still keeps us(if you’re like me) guessing at his next move so enthusiastically likkkkkee “Will he finally give Artie the boot!!?????” or his passive aggressive behavior of silently taking his show back from the shot out of a cannon Lange. But like I’m sure you realized Rob, only real fans would see that underlying mental chess Howard can play and keep on coming and coming and coming back everyday at 5:56 AM like it’s Christmas morning or Hanukkah (hehee forgot where I was hahaha).
Anyway Rob great job!!! thank you, I’ve added you to my alerts so I can see what blogs about the KOAM you come up with next!!
Regards and a safe holiday for you and your family,
Tim Arson

P.S. My wife is almost fully converted to the show butttttt even she says “Thank God I get a break for two weeks” Ahhhhhhh just denial my brother we both know she scretly yearns for theshow like we do hahahahahaaa!!! take care again!

Comment by Tim Arson on 7/03/09 at 1:47 am

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