Declaring a "radio jihad" against President Bush, syndicated morning man
Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the
White House are shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and
one they never saw coming.The pioneering shock jock, "the man who launched the raunch," as the Los
Angeles Times once put it, has emerged almost overnight as the most
influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails
against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly
audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president
come under such withering attack from a radio talk-show host with the
influence and national reach Stern has.
"The potential impact is huge," says Charles Goyette, talk-show host at
KFYI in Phoenix. "And it's not just with the 8 million people who tune
it, it's that he breaks the spell. Everybody's been enchanted by Bush,
that he's a great wartime leader and to criticize him is unpatriotic.
Now Stern pounds him every day and it shatters that illusion that the
man is invincible and he shouldn't be criticized."
"He's got one of the biggest audiences in all of radio, and perhaps the
most loyal," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the
nonpartisan monthly that covers radio's news/talk industry. "And that's
why he's so dangerous for the White House."
