Is Howard Stern "Woke"?
Is Howard Stern "Woke"?
By employing that charged adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English, Trump knew exactly what he was doing in calling Stern the dreaded "woke."
Is Howard Stern now “woke",” as the former President accuses him? Because this is Howard Stern we are talking about. This is the man who threw bologna slices at sex workers, live, on the air. This is the man who played car crash noises while making fun of Matthew Broderick’s accident in Ireland in which two people were killed. This is the man who held trivia contests between porn stars, homeless people and mentally disadvantaged guests. This is the man who, in running for Governor of New York as a Libertarian (and subsequently withdrawing from the race after registering thousands of potential Republicans), dropped out of the race and endorsed George Pataki in 1994, the relatively unknown state legislator who eventually won.
And yet, of late, in his feud with the former President he has not shied away from the charged political label, “woke.” To his credit, in my opinion. His critics — many of whom are former listeners and show participants — have been calling him politically correct for years now. And, to be sure, the Stern show has changed significantly. Gone, apparently, is the mission to demean sex workers. Also gone, evidently, is the humiliation of the homeless and the mentally disadvantaged in the name of compelling radio. Appearing in their place are in-depth interviews with celebrities — mostly musicians he grooved to as a young man — of the Boomer Generation. Howard Stern, 2.0 is essentially Bob Lefsetz, a place where overachievers of his generation can come by to talk about life and success and skiing in Colorado (Zzzzz). It is not everyone’s cup of tea; certainly not mine, dear reader.
But why is Trump — a former POTUS, once again running again for office — so obsessed with this “voice of his generation” satellite radio show? Isn’t such small radio beef small potato’s to the man who joined the ceremonial sword dance with Saudi King Salman? Why is he calling Stern a “Broken Weirdo”? At the peak of his influence, granted, Howard Stern had 20 million listeners in 60 radio markets in North America. He was, in fine, worth the attention of a Presidential candidate. In the wake of podcasting and the fall of terrestrial radio, however, able competitors have replaced the Stern show in influence. Nowadays, Stern probably has as many listeners and as much influence as Adam Corolla.
Trump, who has appeared on Stern’s show more than 20 times, is obsessed with the notion of loyalty. Trump, like Mafia don’s, value loyalty above all else. Ironically, he seems to have no such loyalty towards the Republican Party, of which he is the titular head. But enough about that. Disloyalty — or the perception of disloyalty — is hugely triggering for the poor man, who is, further, incapable of controlling his wrath. One can only imagine what happened in Trump’s childhood that led to him to such a grave psychological obsession with loyalty, at age 77. But here we are:
When Trump goes after someone, with hatred in his heart, you can taste the blood. He wants to do unto others what he fears the most for himself — public humiliation. It is quite literally the opposite of Christianity, what he attempts to do, though he professes loyalty to the Abrahamic religion. In the Truth Social post, Trump attacks Stern — for his physical appearance, for his loss of radio audience, for his questionable cultural relevance — going so far as to wonder aloud if, at the end of 2025, SiriusXM should even pay him his present salary. Trump was aiming for an artery, clearly, particularly in that last point. And protruding his tongue to taste the sanguinary spray. All the main concerns of Stern — and, incidentally, Trump — are touched upon here. Looks; money; power. Mirror images of one another; but Stern, at least, is trying to work on himself. Hence: the matter of “woke.”
They were both once friends — or allies — or what passes for such in New York’s infamously treacherous overachiever circles. Howard Stern was at Trump’s 1993 wedding; Trump was at Stern’s 2008 wedding at Le Cirque. They met on occasion at restaurants and chatted, a sign of ruling class respect. They rated women on a 1 to 10 integer scale, boorishly. And in 2016, they talked about Ivanka on air. According to CNN:
In an October 2006 interview, Stern remarks that Ivanka “looks more voluptuous than ever,” and asked if she had gotten breast implants. Trump is willing to engage in the discussion about his own daughter, telling Stern that she did not get implants.
“She’s actually always been very voluptuous,” Trump responds. “She’s tall, she’s almost 6 feet tall and she’s been, she’s an amazing beauty.”
In another interview, from September 2004, Stern asks Trump if he can call Ivanka “a piece of ass,” to which Trump responds in the affirmative.
“My daughter is beautiful, Ivanka,” says Trump.
Charmed, I’m sure. It is the sort of conversation that one imagines the members of the ruling class of a tribe of lowland gorillas might have would that they could speak fluent English. One only wonders what Ivanka though of this, or if she even cared that this is what passes for her father’s conversation to others about her.
It is the subject of “woke,” however, that is most politically interesting. By employing that charged adjective derived from African-American Vernacular English, Trump, clearly, knew exactly what he was doing. He replaced the common charge against Stern by his migrating fans — that he has become too politically correct — and replaced it with woke. Stern’s migrating fans blamed Marci Turk, the show’s COO, for turning the former shock jock “PC.” And, of course, there was plenty of misogyny in the way the migrating fans blamed Turk online for the show’s evolution (Or, as they see it, devolution).
A (Very) Brief History of Woke
The use of “woke” goes back into the early 20th century and, as mentioned, the African-American vernacular English. So you can see why Trump supporters would have a natural aversion to it. From LDF:
And Black people have never been silent — or at a loss for innovation — when articulating demands for justice. In fact, the use of “woke” as an in-group signal urging Black people to be aware of the systems that harm and otherwise put us at a disadvantage is documented as far back as the 1920s. The Jamaican philosopher Marcus Garvey, exhorting members of the Black diaspora in America, Jamaica, and elsewhere to join the cause of Pan-Africanism, called on them to “Wake Up!” By 1938, the iconic American Blues musician Lead Belly (born Huddie Ledbetter) had recorded the song “Scottsboro Boys.” The ballad tells the true story of four Black youths who were falsely accused of raping a white woman in Scottsboro, Alabama, and subsequently convicted by an all-white jury and sentenced to death — though they were thankfully freed after several appeals and trials. In the song, Lead Belly says of Alabama, “I advise everybody to be a little careful when they go down there. Stay woke. Keep your eyes open.”
As I said, Trump knows his audience, which used to overlap with Stern’s. And Howard Stern replied that being called "woke” is a compliment, signaling the final break between the Stern audience and the Trumpists. All those years of defending cops under any circumstances, by any means necessary, have ended in a Stern now almost fully aligned with the Democrat party. This is, of course, the same Howard Stern who tried to get the late Ana Marie Nicole to get on a scale for ratings. The same man who played gunshots — and later apologized — while talking about the murder of Latin music superstar Selena.
Stern sees it all as evolution. He is no longer the same man, he tells us, truly. Stern wrote, in his last book, "Howard Stern Comes Again”
Telling Carly Simon how hot she was for a half-hour or spewing sex questions to Wilmer Valderrama – this ultimately led to nothing. It wasn't good radio. It was meaningless. It was just me being self-absorbed and compulsive about asking something that would provoke and antagonize. Those weren't really interviews. They were monologues. Instead of a conversation, it was just me blurting out ridiculous things. I had some real issues.
Then I started going to a psychotherapist.
It wasn’t good radio, you see.
So, yes, Howard Stern is no longer encouraging fans to go through the garbage of Rosie O’Donnell and report back on the air as to what they found (as he actually once did). For that we can be truly happy. Instead, Howard is hosting “surprise shows” in his $52 million Palm Beach mansion in July with “friends” like Brooke Shields, Robert Downey, Jr and Drew Barrymore. One wonders if this is really evolution, or rather the delusions of grandeur? Is this what passes for “good radio” now? Or is this the life that he dreamed of living during “the high school years”? If so, good for him, I suppose, but why subject people to it? Do people — particularly people who subscribe to XMSirius for Stern — want to hear Drew Barrymore and Jimmy Fallon DJ on a Sunday evening?
I am pretty sure I don’t.
On the plus side, better Howard Stern showing off his cultivated collection of celebrity friends than Howard Stern questioning why the Columbine shooters didn’t sexually molest any of the high school girls before committing mass murder.
Evolution, yes, thankfully a little. Woke? Not quite.
“‘The people you know live in this moment,’ Fox News founder Roger Ailes once told the journalist Michael Wolff, ‘the people who Fox is for live in 1965.’ The Murdoch family enabled Ailes to create an alternate world for this curated audience of regressives at the network. But Wolff reports that Ailes had no use for the Murdochs, especially the sons, James and Lachlan, whom he derided as ‘gay’—a label he applied to all coastal elite men.” (Nina Burleigh/American Political Freakshow)
“Newsrooms are being confronted with an age-old dilemma: how to properly cover Donald Trump's belligerent spray of threats. On Friday, the disgraced former president suggested that Joint Chiefs Chairman Mark Milley should be given the death sentence — yes, you read that correctly — for supposed treason. And on Sunday, Trump went on an unhinged rant accusing Comcast of treason and saying the company should be "investigated" because of supposed ‘one-side and vicious coverage by NBC NEWS, and in particular MSNBC.’” (Oliver Darcy/Reliable Sources)
“German investigators would really like to talk to the Ukrainian man living in a single-family home in the northwest of Kyiv. His name is Rustem A., a 41-year-old businessman who owns several companies, including a pig farm and a heat pump manufacturer. Specifically, the Germans want to ask Rustem A. about an attack that shocked the world one year ago. On September 26, 2022, perpetrators blew up the Nord Stream 1 and 2 natural gas pipelines running along the floor of the Baltic Sea. The authorities in Germany think Rustem A. might be able to tell them a few things about the attack.” (Zeit)
President Biden joins the picket line in Michigan. (C-Span)