SO NOW HE’S MR. MODERATE
‘Worst Generation’ gets Stern’s goat
Hey now! It would have been hard to imagine in 1992, while Howard Stern was at MTV’s VMA awards dressed as the outrageous superhero Fartman, that the 66-year-old radio personality would emerge as a moderate voice on radio in 2020.
It’s also unlikely anyone would have predicted that 28 years later, a flamboyant realityTV star would be the president of the United States while a pandemic ravaged a debt-ridden nation where an intense racial divide, record unemployment and chaotic protests — involving liberals and conservatives — are a part of daily life.
Yet with five months to go before the 2020 presidential election, Stern, who has repeatedly said in recent weeks that he doesn’t want to do a political show, is one of few voices that still manages to offend a bipartisan audience.
According to him, it’s the world, not him, that’s become shocking, particularly with regard to ending the coronavirus pandemic.
“I don’t understand the nomask thing,” he said Tuesday. “It’s become, if you wear a mask you don’t like Trump and if you wear a mask you’re a liberal p—-y. It makes no sense to me.”
Right-wing conspiracy theorists like Sean Hannity have attacked Stern for not sharing his love for Donald Trump.
“That’s not the guy I grew up listening to,” Hannity, who is eight years Stern’s junior, said in December.
The left also hasn’t always known what to do with the politically incorrect comic, who says that he largely identifies as a Republican. When Stern ran for governor of New York as a Libertarian in 1994, he did so as a pro-death penalty candidate.
Stern critics have argued the self-proclaimed King of All Media softened after signing an enormous contract that brought him to SiriusXM in 2006. But when the coronavirus pandemic lockdown forced Americans indoors and SiriusXM made its paid subscription service free to listeners, the broadcasting giant showed he could still generate headlines.
On April 27, Stern urged the presidents “minions,” as he called them on Tuesday’s show, to get together and drink bleach if they weren’t disturbed by the White House news conference held four days earlier, where Trump suggested disinfectants might cure COVID-19.
A couple of weeks later, Stern who says he knows Trump “well” and has had great times with him at Mar-a-Lago, broke the news to the president’s supporters that both he and Trump regard those people as suckers.
“The people Trump despises most, love him the most,” Stern told his listeners, many of whom are Trump supporters. “Go to Mar-a-Lago — see if there’s any people who look like you.”
The strongest testament to Stern’s punching power is that Trump, who picks fights with everyone from Bette Midler to
Meryl Streep, is yet to say or tweet a negative word about the nation’s top-earning radio personality.
Stern all but said Monday that he has no interest in being the voice of a generation — at least not the baby boom generation that produced him and Trump, who turns 74 this month.
On that show, Stern spoke of the sacrifices made by “The Greatest Generation” that was born into the Great Depression, came together to win World War II, then handed a superpower to their children.
He agonized over the fact that Americans now, the president in particular, can’t even be bothered to wear a mask to protect one another during a pandemic.
According to Stern, the baby boomers may have been the Greatest Generation’s biggest failure.
“We were raised by the Great Generation,” he said. “They overindulged us.”
He also wonders how his and Trump’s generation will be remembered.
“How about the Worst Generation, can we say that?” he wondered. “Go with the Worst Generation.”