The Clown Who Bought a Seat at the so-called Grown-Up Table.
There was a time when hearing Howard Stern’s voice on the radio felt like tuning into a live wire. Raw, dangerous, unfiltered. While living in Boston, I’d listen to the replays on the WBZN, because that’s all I had at the time.
When I moved to L.A., I’d listen as I would drive from one studio to the next delivering videos of tv shows to producers. In a city where it takes 45 minutes to go five miles, you need a good co-pilot.
When I was editing films at night for a company, I would have on, Howard 100 and listen to the days replay while waiting for the project I’m editing to upload or render.
Stern was that guy. The guy who said what you weren’t supposed to give a fuck about was the establishment.
The guy who gave a microphone to the misfits and told the elites, producers and the FCC to shove it. He even considered running for political office until he was asked to show his tax returns.
A man who consistently embarrassed his wife and parents on air for ratings. Giving disable people and staffers, derogatory nicknames. Bullying women to take their clothing off and berate them afterwards for ratings.
But somewhere along the way, the King of All Media abdicated.
Howard Stern once thrived on being the uncensored id of American radio: a guy who pushed boundaries, mocked sacred cows, and gave voice to misfits, pornstars and outcasts while gleefully flipping off mainstream respectability.
He made his name by not caring who he offended. But then, something shifted, and not just in tone, but in foundation.
Once he remarried and started rubbing elbows with the Hamptons crowd, he traded unpredictability for polished hypocrisy. The man who used to roast celebrities became one, earning over a billion dollars during his time at SiriusXM. Now worth about $650 million.
The “King of All Media” began sounding like the court jester in someone else’s castle. Not the one he built.
A new CEO was appointed to SiriusXM.
It started subtly. A softened tone here. A backpedal there. Renaming members of the “Whack Pack” so as not to offend. That was the first crack in the armor.
You can’t build a legacy on brutal honesty, then suddenly develop a conscience shaped like a Hollywood PR firm and attack those you brought along for the ride and while they paid for the gasoline.
When the guy who made a career mocking women, mental illness, obesity, and celebrity hypocrisy suddenly became sensitive to labels, it was like watching a punk band put on khakis and start playing brunch gigs with elevator music, acoustically without amplifiers.
And then came, COVID. That was the tipping point. Not because of health concerns, but because Stern, who once prided himself on questioning authority and mocking the herd, became the loudest megaphone for the herd. Saying people who don’t get the vaccine should be denied hospital care and should go home and die, from behind the locked doors of his home studio.
Screaming about masks.
Shaming the unvaccinated.
Preaching fear from a mansion bunker. It wasn’t brave, it was performative. A guy who once stood apart from the Politically Correct Crowd became an eager mouthpiece for the PC crowd and is now crowned, “Woke.”
Stern, once a master of mocking both sides, turned into Rachel Maddow with a better wig and plastic surgery. He wasn’t just political, he was predictably political. The kind of guy who suddenly loved all the people he used to mock, so long as they hated the same guy he did.
The comedy died. The rebellion died. Daily talks of kitty cats and TDS tirades was now common practice. And what remained wasn’t Stern, it was a neutered, virtue-signaling shell, bearing his name. A man who now takes himself too seriously like a Sage, after decades of not giving a crap and gladly collecting fines from the FCC.
It was only a matter of time before the faithful snapped out of it. You can only gaslight your audience for so long before they remember what made you worth listening to in the first place.
He didn’t just lose the edge. He sold it off to join a group of Elite Woke Social Warriors, and people noticed.
There was a time when Howard mocked the insane, the disabled, the downright bizarre, and somehow, you knew it came from a place of strange affection. It was all part of the show. Behind the curtain, he actually cared for the outcasts he amplified.
But now, that warmth is gone.
What’s left feels cold and arrogant.
He’s no longer poking fun to include people, he’s sneering to exclude them. If you don’t think like he thinks, feel like he feels, or fall in line with his worldview, you’re dismissed as stupid, dangerous, or beneath him and shouldn’t be allowed outside your home until you fall in line with his thesis of how to behave.
It’s not just unfunny, it’s smug. And he’s not alone. His buddy Jimmy Kimmel walks the same path: once a jester, now a self-appointed moral authority with a laugh track.
In the land of Sinaplenty, redemption doesn’t come from the hypocrisy of reinvention, it comes from owning the damage done to those you exploited on your rise to the Billionaire’s Club.
The change is now owed to the elite who embraced him once he could afford the entry fee.
c 2025 Chu The Cud
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Chu The Cud 