Salon: Howard Stern Unplugged

With the government escalating its war on radio free speech, the shock jock's days are numbered

For the past several weeks shock jock Howard Stern has been insisting that his days on the radio dial are numbered. And based on recent events, he might be right.

Last Thursday Stern was permanently kicked off six stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, the country's biggest radio chain, after the Federal Communications Commission slapped the media giant with a half-million-dollar fine for airing a Stern program on April 9, 2003, that was deemed offensive. With the FCC suddenly adopting harsher guidelines for indecency enforcement and with legislation pending before Congress that would jack up those fines into the seven- and possibly eight-figure range as well as threaten license renewals, Stern's daily doomsaying about his broadcasting demise can no longer be dismissed as self-involved chatter.

"They're executing him," says Michael Harrison, publisher of the radio industry's Talkers magazine. "The government has unleashed a round of volleys that will drive him off the air."

(snip)

The recent barrage of fines has galvanized Stern, turning the former Republican sympathizer into a fierce critic of not just the FCC but of President Bush as well. "I strategize more about my radio show than Bush does about the war in Iraq," Stern quipped on Monday. The jock claims Bush has sold out to the religious right and ordered the FCC to crack down on broadcasters to appease this political base. He saves many of his most stinging barbs these days for Attorney General John Ashcroft, whose fundamentalist critique of popular culture puts Stern in mind of the black-robed jihadis America is fighting in the Middle East.

(snip)

Still, many broadcasters fear the country is on the verge of a new puritanism. Says one radio executive, who requests anonymity out of fear of political retribution: "This is the beginning of a scary misuse of government power to intimidate people."



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http://salon.com/news/feature/2004/04/14/sternunplugged/index.html

hard...if it had been a little white one it might have slipped by..especially at the distance it was reveled.:bounce: