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03/12/2004 Archived Entry: "Rall on Stern"
Rall on Stern
Ted Rall connects the dots between the old McCarthyism and the new.
We tell our kids that America learned from McCarthyism, but a new version of the Red Scare is being born in this new century. Powerbrokers connected to what Hillary Clinton clumsily called the "vast right-wing conspiracy"--the Bush-Cheney's neoconservative war profiteers, the Christian Right and their media allies at Fox News and Clear Channel Communications--operate out in the open. Their goal: to crush personalities whose influence and eloquence threatens their plan to recast the United States in their white, heterosexual, pro-business image.Ironically two of the hard right's recent high-profile speech martyrs, Bill Maher and Howard Stern, are libertarians--a group whose distrust of big government traditionally prompts them to vote Republican. ABC, a subsidiary of the Walt Disney Company--a major political contributor to Bush's 2000 presidential campaign and other Republicans--canceled Maher's "Politically Incorrect" TV show after 9/11.
Now, over on AM radio, the Bush-controlled Federal Communications Commission has targeted Howard Stern for trumped-up decency violations. In a classic tag-team move, Clear Channel Communications, the thousand-station-plus behemoth so closely allied with the White House that it organized pro-Bush "Rallies for America" during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq, declared Stern in violation of a brand-new "zero tolerance" policy for on-air indecency. "Clear Channel drew a line in the sand today with regard to protecting our listeners from indecent content, and Howard Stern's show blew right through it," Clear Channel Radio president John Hogan said before dropping Stern's popular syndicated program--Clear Channel is willing to lose money to promote its political agenda--from its stations.
Citing three separate FCC sources, Stern says he expects to be hit by a huge fine--then fired. "It's over for me as a broadcaster," he said last week. "I'm checkmated. All they gotta do is fine [Infinity Broadcasting, Stern's employer] and then we're gone. And there's nothing we can do about it." On March 5, he added: "I'm guessing that sometime next week will be my last show on this station. There's a cultural war going on. The religious right is winning. We're losing."
Replies: 3 people speak up
Well, with a liberal network coming online, his career is probably not all *that* over. After all, the state of the nation depends on not electing a one-note government this time.
Scorpio
http://scorpio.typepad.com/eccentricity/
Posted by Scorpio @ 03/12/2004 01:43 PM NY
Scorpio, you beat me to it!;-) I was going to suggest that Stern get a show on Air America should Infinity cancel him.
Posted by Tina @ 03/12/2004 02:09 PM NY
Do you guys ever listen to Stern? He doesn't want to do political. Not even now. It's driving him so crazy he's willing to move on. He's not a Democrat and is only doing the anti-Bush thing because it's hitting him. It's not that he doesn't care. Just that he doesn't care THAT MUCH. He won't go to Air America. That doesn't get him what he wants. All he wants is to be able to do HIS show. Air America would give him no more freedom from the FCC than Infinity does. And that's all he wants. Freedom to do his show. His future probably lies with satelite radio; the radio equivalent of HBO/Showtime.
Posted by GrapeDad @ 03/12/2004 03:17 PM NY
