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First They Came For Howard Stern... April 26, 2004 by Mike LaSalle
If the bill is passed by the Senate and is signed into law by the President, The Federal Communications Commission will be empowered to impose fines on broadcasters of up to $500,000 per incident - up from today's limit of $27,000. Radio's "King of Gross," Howard Stern, has aleady felt the brunt of the FCC's new war on broadcast 'indecency' - his syndicator Clear Channel was just fined nearly $500,000 on account of Stern's ribald antics. According to reports, another of Stern's syndicators - Infinity Broadcasting - is likely to be fined in the neighborhood of $1.5 million in the coming days. Conservative talk show host and columnist Neal Boortz takes a libertarian approach and flatly challenges the notion that the "airwaves" should be controlled by the government. "Howard Stern has been doing what he has been doing, vulgar as it can be, for 20 years," Boortz wrote in a recent column. "I’ve searched to the ends of the Internet and as many of Nebraska’s best weekly’s as I could, and I have yet to turn up one story about one single human being anywhere in this vast country of ours who was in any way harmed by anything they heard from a radio dialed to Stern. Not once have I heard even whispers of a situation where a Howard Stern broadcast violated any individual’s right to life, liberty or property." Are these government sanctions really necessary to protect the public's collective sensibilities, or is the FCC merely catering to the whims of well-organized special interest groups? According FCC statistics cited by The Journal News, of the 240,342 complaints received by the FCC in 2003, 239,837 were aimed at nine specific shows. Web-based organizations like the Parents Television Council are openly taking credit for compelling the FCC to take action against broadcast indecency:
But as Howard Stern has pointed out, the FCC's definition of 'broadcast decency' is nothing if not a moving target. Case in point: Howard Stern produced a transcript from a recently broadcast episode of "The Oprah Winfrey Show" in which an Oprah guest discussed a particularly tasteless sex act on air. Stern compared the Oprah Show transcript to a transcript from 'The Howard Stern Show' which was cited by the FCC for indecency. "Now what's the likelihood that the FCC will be fining Oprah Winfrey for indecency?" Stern's website said. "You can't even make the argument that the Oprah show was doing an education segment. It was clearly played for laughs and shock. Something that apparently is off limits to Howard but perfectly acceptable for the Oprah Winfrey Show." Stern's point seems to be that 'indecency' may be defined by the number of complaints generated by the targeted e-mail campaigns of moral advocacy groups. He may very well be right. HOISTED ON THEIR OWN PETARD? And here's the rub: Despite the fact that the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act was clearly passed by overwhelming majorities of both Republicans and Democrats, Stern seems to be holding Republicans specifically responsible for the actions of the FCC (notwithstanding the fact a Democrat - FCC Commissioner Michael Copp - has taken a lead role in pushing through the new rules). In short, Stern has taken his lumps from groups like the Parents Television Council and turned it into a broad-based campaign squarely set against the Bush administration. And with some 8-million regular listeners, Stern may indeed have his turn on impacting the upcoming election. "Stern can use (his radio show and website) as a way to energize his fan base and turn them into activists," said Tom Taylor, editor of Inside Radio. "It's almost as if the FCC crackdown has radicalized Stern in the old '60s political sense." Michael Harrison of Talkers Magazine agrees. "Howard Stern thinks he's a victim of Bush trying to shut him down, and I don't believe it's specifically about Stern. But I do think he's a victim of the atmosphere generated by the Bush administration and the far right." If the election in November turns out to be close, it's conceivable President Bush could lose by a margin equal to the number of votes Stern can marshal against him. Conservatives would do well to pick their battles. No Conservative in his right mind wants to see Hanoi John Kerry waltz into the White House because an activist fraction of the Republican coalition chose to join a pissing contest with the likes of Howard Stern. Mike LaSalle is the editor and publisher of MensNewsDaily.com. Alanis Morissette image courtesy of JUNO. |
On
March 11th of this year, about six weeks after Janet Jackson's famed
Super Bowl "wardrobe malfunction", the U.S. House of Representatives
passed |
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