Media

Stern's protective layer of hypocrisy

by Dan Kennedy

The contemptible Howard Stern got plenty of attention a couple of weeks ago when he wondered, on air, why the Columbine High School killers didn't try to have sex with any of their female classmates. But what passed almost unnoticed was his snidely candid observation, made several weeks earlier, that his employer's hypocrisy protected him from the normal consequences of such loathsome outbursts.

The March 2 New York Post reported that Stern, whose morning show is syndicated in more than 30 cities, had told his listeners that Doug "The Greaseman" Tracht should not have been fired for making a vicious racist remark after playing a record by hip-hop star Lauryn Hill. ("No wonder people drag them behind trucks," Tracht said.) WARW, in Washington, DC, canned Tracht, even though -- or maybe because -- he had survived making a crack earlier in his career about the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.

"Why should he be fired over something he feels?" the Post quoted Stern as saying of Tracht. "And he apologized, after all. They fired him because they couldn't take the heat. The station has no backbone."

And then this: "If he had some ratings like I do, he'd be able to get away with it."

Bull's-eye.

In fact, both WARW and Stern's home station, New York's WXRK, are owned by CBS -- as is WBCN (104.1 FM), the local station that airs Stern's program. In addition, Stern's employer is Infinity Broadcasting, which is an almost wholly owned subsidiary of CBS.

Just weeks after Tracht's firing, following the Colorado shootings, Stern was leeringly asking listeners, "Did those kids try to have sex with any of the good-looking girls? They didn't even do that. At least if you're going to kill yourself and kill all the kids, why wouldn't you have some sex?" And CBS did nothing. Stern's remarks barely caused a stir outside of Colorado. A May 1 column by the Boston Globe's John Ellis, calling for Stern's firing, was one of the rare exceptions.

You don't have to ask CBS whether it has two sets of standards, one for expendable employees such as Tracht and another for cash machines such as Stern. The network's most valuable property has already provided a disturbingly accurate answer. Ker-ching!