Stern Concerns

The conservatives at Clear Channel Communications decide what's best for you...

Admittedly, I was shocked to see the headlines late last night, trumpeting that the King of All Media had been shut down thanks to one of the largest media conglomerates of our time. Clear Channel Communications, which is like an electronic conservative think-tank (minus the "think" part), has suspended airing Howard Stern's morning radio program. Censorship, I initially felt, is alive and well in the year 2004.

Fortunately for supporters of First Amendment rights, Clear Channel's sphere of influence where Stern is concerned consists of only six radio stations. Those six stations have likely been barraged with some very interesting phone calls from incensed listeners, not to mention a host of advertisers who may feel just a little bit burned by the company that took their cash and then turned around and killed the cow.

It's fairly early yet, and I should be tuning in to hear for myself if Howard even notices what passes for current events these days. Or I could tune in to my local AM radio station, the one owned by Clear Channel, and listen to a certain morning talk-show host who has repeatedly made ignorant and offensive mistakes, such as referring to Iranians as "Arabs" (they are not).

That same station will broadcast Rush Limbaugh later in the day, a truly fallen fellow who now possesses all the moral turgidity of Darryl Strawberry. For all of the things Howard Stern may or may not have done, he has certainly never trafficked in illicit prescription drugs, but the only way Rush left the air was of his own volition, to seek drug treatment for about a month. The day he returned, how many Clear Channel outlets had pulled his program?

Clear Channel, of course, cited the FCC and its decency standards when it pulled the plug on Stern, who entertains between eight and ten million listeners each week. The company seems to be riding the angry-conservative wave of anti-smut, generated after CBS's very strange Super Bowl halftime production. This week, Clear Channel also fired a DJ who went by the name "Bubba the Love Sponge" after his on-air antics got the company fined three quarters of a million dollars or so.

Infinity Broadcasting, owned by corporate giant Viacom, has thus far expressed no worries about keeping Stern on the air. They understand that what the puritans at Clear Channel (as well as the FCC) may find objectionable also makes for money in the bank. They wouldn't dream of dropping him. Stern's lawyers would do well to declare Clear Channel in breach and tear up their contracts. There should be no problem finding airtime in those six markets where the radio giant shot itself in the foot.

Clear Channel, by the way, is not an impartial or objective entity, not by any stretch of the imagination. As a company, it goes out of its way to promote the conservative point of view, the Republican point of view, and George W. Bush's point of view. Long before the first convoy rolled for Baghdad, Clear Channel was busy organizing and paying for pro-war rallies. Imagine that - pro war. Never mind that only a few hundred misguided souls showed up for those sorry events, at the same time that millions of people across the world were protesting Bush's ill-advised bid to conquer Iraq. In doing what they did, Clear Channel's corporate masters proved they are far more capable of committing true obscenity that goes beyond any level of shock jockeying.

There's an underlying point here, as only the detrimentally naïve can remain unaware of the fact that Stern doesn't exactly beat the drums on the president's behalf. He once ridiculed Bush by describing a fictional toy action-figure of him, saying it wears a suit and doesn't do anything. Because of Clear Channel's right-wing stance, not many people will be convinced that politics wasn't the deciding factor behind this move.

That, better than most examples, shows how the conservative power base in America really feels about those who would be their constituents. Call it the "Big Nanny" syndrome. At Clear Channel, they don't suppose that people can think for themselves, that Stern might lose listeners by being too close to the edge at times. They don't imagine, at all, that the free market might govern itself in this regard, and that the only thing really at risk in such programming would be Stern's own livelihood. They don't trust you to judge for yourself what is and what is not acceptable to you. It's the very same approach that conservatives bring to the political arena.

However many people may or may not be able to tune in to Howard Stern this morning, it's a safe bet that more and more Americans will be tuning out the conservative message, and that has nothing to do with a few dirty words. It actually has more to do with some old, clean and familiar ones:

"Congress shall make no law..."