American Scream

Nick Gillespie from the March 1996 issue

(Page 2 of 2)

"The interview was pathetic," writes Stern. "She did everything but beg the audience to take to the streets for MJ....And then I realized that the son of a bitch even got the masses into the streets for him. Of course, he had to pay them, but take a look at that stupid movie trailer that...ran during the show. The streets are lined with weeping fans. They're holding up signs saying KING OF POP. And here comes Michael, like a conquering monarch. He's got the gay militia outfit on, with the hockey shinguards, and he marches into town, surrounded by troops, waving, blowing kisses. The camera is pulled back so you can't see the melting face. It's a perfect world." But even as "everybody falls into line," Stern notes that "Michael's record sales go into the toilet. Why? Well, partly it's just that the music sucks, and partly it's the nasty smell of those charges, charges that linger in the public's mind because there are questions that were never answered."

Even Stern's most seemingly juvenile antics reveal a contempt for glossy, prefabricated images. For instance, one of the most popular--and pilloried--parts of Stern's radio program involves his sending his crony "Stuttering John" out to interview celebrities. As he did in Private Parts, Stern devotes a chapter to John's misadventures. "To me," writes Stern, "John has the scariest job imaginable. He has to approach celebrities and, armed only with a microphone and a list of cleverly engineered questions that we write, verbally terrorize them into revealing their true essence to the world....Morton Downey Jr. overturned a table and threw John to the floor....Eric Bogosian grabbed him and slammed his head up against a wall....Lou Reed put his hands around John's neck, trying to strangle him.... Raquel Welch whacked him right in the nose" after he asked her, "Are they drooping yet?"

What is brilliant about the bit is that it catches off guard celebs who thrive on presenting a seamless image to the public--it is guerilla theater at its best. The results can be nothing short of hilarious, as when John showed up at a Burt Reynolds book signing and asked the question, "Did you avoid Ned Beatty after he got raped in Deliverance?" As security guards bear down on him, Stern tells us, John is able to get off one final question to the enraged actor: "Burt! How do you respond to charges that you are hot-headed?"

In the same vein, Stern devotes a chapter to "the unleashing of the mad phone stalkers," fans of his program who harass other radio and TV programs with fake calls. Highlights include calls to the Today show with Ross Perot as a guest ("Mr. Perot," queried the caller, "Have you ever had the desire to mindmeld with Howard Stern's penis?"), to CNN's Sonya Live during the World Trade Center bombing (posing as a worker trapped in the building, a caller attributed the explosion to one of Stern's farts), to local Oklahoma TV in the wake of the Oklahoma City bombing (impersonating Rep. Frank Lucas, a caller told viewers that the suspects were Islamic men and one of them was believed to be Howard Stern). "What's amazing," Stern writes, "is that these genius phone artists can go right on the air...and no one even bothers to check them out."

The ultimate coup came when a caller got through to Peter Jennings of ABC News during the conclusion of O.J. Simpson's Bronco chase. While Simpson's truck was parked outside his Brentwood home, the caller got on by posing as one of Simpson's neighbors. The caller, as Stern tells it, "slipped into a thick black dialect that made Kingfish seem like a Rhodes scholar," complete with observations along the lines of "Oh, my Lord, this is quite tenses" and "Now lookee here, [O.J.] look very upset. I don' know what gon' be doin'." While such shenanigans are in undeniably bad taste, Stern correctly points out, as with Stuttering John's questions, that the media get what they deserve: "If Jennings wasn't a wooden Indian, he would have realized that this guy is a fake. First of all, his dialect was obviously phony. Second, a shucking and jiving black man is obviously not O.J.'s neighbor. All Jennings could see was his exclusive!"

Stern's account of his abortive 1994 run for governor of New York on the Libertarian Party ticket similarly illustrates his penchant for discombobulating standard procedure. While some LP members are no doubt still smarting from the experience, there's no question that Stern heightened the party's visibility while also mocking politicians, always a worthwhile activity. For example, he recounts how he came clean to the electorate at the press conference announcing his candidacy: "I've got a few faults: I'm forty years old and I masturbate. Maybe I talk about sex too much. I don't think that's a horrible thing. But I'll tell you what my assets are. I am totally honest. There will be no backroom dealings on this. Everything will be done on the radio. I'm embarrassed I'm so honest. Who else would admit to the size of his genitals being under two inches?...So I'm saying that I'm an honest person--and I have the hair to be the governor."

Stern's campaign--which included a photo-op at a strip club called Goldfinger's--was a ferocious parody of the political process, right up to its anti-climactic end, when he dropped out because he couldn't get a waiver from financial disclosure laws (he notes that his lawyers even filed a challenge against the rules). At his farewell press conference, Stern spoke after being introduced by a man who "suffered from throat cancer and...could only speak through his voice kazoo." Stern relates his criticism of disclosure laws: "I want you to know that I spend twenty-five hours a week telling you all the most intimate details of my life. Name another candidate who gives you such disclosure. Has Mario Cuomo ever told you the size of his penis? Has he talked about the stains on his underpants and burying those underpants in his backyard when he was young? And this guy Pataki [whom Stern would later endorse], has he ever shown you his face on camera, much less his ass at the MTV Music Video Awards?"

To be sure, this kind of humor is not for all tastes. But it is remarkably consistent and Stern, like all great satirists, rarely forgets to train his guns on himself and his image. "There are those in my audience who think I'm busy going to parties and socializing with celebrity friends," writes Stern in a chapter on cybersex. "But the pathetic fact is, I sit in my basement...and seldom emerge except for meals."

Stern's attempts at scoring on the Inter-net are no more successful than his pitiful, pre-marriage attempts were in the real world. "If you're ugly, if you're deformed, and married for twenty years, this is the place for you....Here on Prodigy chat I'm a single, Brad Pitt look-alike," he says. But alas, that's only one more illusion that fades away. After striking out with a potential cybermate, Stern notes: "Well, a major theory of mine had just been shot down. For forty-one years I had always believed that I was one of those guys who had a great personality but women never noticed me because of my ugly face. Turns out, not only am I ugly, but I have a dip-shit personality." And even when he finally does find cybermates, the sex turns out to be less than perfect--typing and masturbating don't real-ly work well together and he has a bit of a performance problem ("Not even two minutes into this cybersex and I blow my load. I prematurely ejaculate even with computer sex").

True to form, Stern must completely tear apart the image: He eventually brings "Rubberbaby," a cyberlover who had described herself as a Janine Turner lookalike into his radio studio. "Rubberbaby shattered my illusions....My dear sweet vixen was...well, she was a housewife on fucking crutches. She wasn't ugly, but she wasn't exactly a fantasy woman....The way she was hopping around the studio on one leg to give me a hug wasn't exactly filling me with fantasies," writes Stern, who swears he will not "use the computer for sexual purposes, ever again."

Although Stern's unending demolition of public and private narratives strikes some as nihilistic, cruel, and perverse, it seems to me that it is absolutely an appropriate response to the world in which we live. When Stern asks, say, Woody Allen pal Dick Cavett, "Do you have any daughters I can bang?" he isn't simply going for a cheap laugh. He is driving home the point that when everyone is constantly trading in self-serving visions of goods, services, and themselves, the only proper response is to insist on honesty. It is Stern's willingness to stand by that fundamental truth that energizes his satire and binds him to his audience.

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