NIGHTLINE is giving Stern some publicity tonight in advance of his debut on Sirrius Monday.
Said Stern: “I am the poster boy for what the religious right wants to control. They are just like the Taliban.”
Well…if by religious right Howard is referring to people who don’t like his filth, don’t find him funny, and are saddened by the fact that children can hear him asking women to take their clothes off and to tell men to stick their toe in an orifice, then that makes me one.
The fact is, Mr. Stern, you don’t have to be on the religious right to find your act offensive. On Nightline, Stern asked host Martin Bashir to spin the sex wheel. It stopped on “squirt you with mayo”. Stern told Bashir “so see…now we would squirt you with mayonaise”.
Oh quit…my side is hurting.
Stern told Bashir (with a straight face) that his show is responsible for raising the bar of morality in America. That’s the first funny thing I’ve ever heard him say.
The trouble with Stern’s success is that it seems to be encouraging other comedians to sink lower and go for laughs by using sex slang. I listened to 3 hours of the three XM comedy stations on my way back to Memphis tonight. One channel is unrated, one is clean and the other is from Canada eh.
I heard dozens of comedians from Henny Youngman to Bill Cosby to Rita Rudner to Ernest G to Chris Rock. Some used profanity and were funny. Some used profanity and were not funny.
John Caponera, who’s a Vegas performer and who had a short-lived sitcom on NBC in the early 90s, is a very funny comedian who does use profanity in his act. He isn’t funny because he says the ‘f word’, he’s funny because he tells funny stories. “I got a parking ticked for $350 for parking in a handicapped space. I was wrong, I deserved a ticket. But $350???! I was parked at a roller rink!”
That’s funny whether he says a dirty word or not. Larry the Cable Guy is funny because of the way he talks and the stories he tells. He’s funny when he says “s***” and when he says “poop”.
But way too many of the comedians I heard tonight used the f-word over and over again, even when it wasn’t in context with the story they were telling. They seemed to put too much emphasis on the dirty words in their act and not on the stories themselves. That’s what Stern does. Maybe if he spent more time preparing content instead of the same old tired act of “so take your top off”, he’d be worth the $13/month. But that ain’t happening.
As Potsie would say: “funny as a crutch” Howard.