WAS SO CRAZY!
Stern explains away 1993 blackface skit
IHoward Stern is pleading insanity to charges of racism.
The 66-year-old shock jock started his SiriusXM morning show Monday by addressing the social media resurgence of a 27-year-old bit in which he wore blackface for a TV special. “There’s nothing new here, we all know I was the craziest motherf——r on radio,” Stern said. “So crazy I might have been insane.”
Stern also mockingly congratulated critics for unearthing potentially embarrassing old footage that was hiding in plain sight.
The controversy began Thursday when filmmaker Tariq Nasheed shared video of a 1993 Stern TV special, where the broadcaster donned blackface in a skit parodying actor Ted Danson, who earlier that year wore blackface at a Friars Club roast honoring comedian Whoopi Goldberg. Danson and Goldberg were romantically involved at the time of the event.
In Stern’s bit, which also starred his co-host Robin Quivers and comedic actor Sherman Hemsley, the shock jock played an exaggerated version of a black-faced Danson.
He repeatedly invoked the N-word while doing so.
Donald Trump Jr., whom Stern has mocked mercilessly in recent weeks, shared the video on Instagram Friday. “Yikes!” he captioned it. Trump Jr. also claimed that if a right-winger used that same language, it would be detrimental to that person’s career.
Stern speculated Monday that Trump Jr. and his president dad were behind the unearthing, or at least promoting, the clip in retaliation for his mocking of the Trump administration.
“They actually ‘uncovered’ things that aired on TV 30 years ago,” Stern mocked.
The clip was from Stern’s “New Year’s Rotten Eve Pageant.”
“I had completely forgotten about that,” Quivers, who is black, said Monday about the 1993 skit.
She added that she and Stern never attempted to hide the video and claimed she barely remembered doing the bit. “When I saw it, I thought, ‘Where did this come from?’ ” Quivers said.
Stern spoke at length about how years of psychotherapy have changed the way he broadcasts. In the past, he said, nothing was off-limits on-air.
“Look, here’s the bigger point I will make,” he said. “I came to realize that what I was doing was demanding your full attention.” Looking back, Stern said, it makes him “cringe” to watch most of his old work, and he said he wouldn’t do something like the Danson skit now. “Would I go about it the same way now? Probably not,” he said, before doubling-down. “Not probably — wouldn’t.” Stern added that if anyone wants to dig, they’ll probably find lots of outrageous content in his archives that may not have aged well.
“I never did anything behind the scenes, I did it right in front of your face,” he said.
“Always.”
With regards to the blackface bit, Stern said, “What can I say. … I own it.”
He also seemed to take a dig at President Trump, whose advocates said it was just “locker-room talk” when Trump was caught on a hit mic in 2005 claiming that because he’s a star, he can grab the genitalia of random women.
“Don’t talk in the locker room, talk on the f—-ing air,” Stern said.
Stern has been a big critic of the Trump administration, which includes faulting the president for a lack of leadership during the ongoing coronavirus pandemic that has killed nearly 120,000 Americans and added trillion of dollars to the national debt. He said last month that Trump, whom Stern has spent time with socially, secretly despises his most devoted followers.
After Trump Jr. claimed last month that Stern had changed, the shock jock went after him, too.
“He is such a wit, he is such a genius,” Stern joked during a May 19 broadcast. “He would have made a fortune if he wasn’t under his father’s thumb. Game over. You can’t argue with a genius like that.”