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September 1998 Archives

September 27, 1998

Unfunny Business

Over the past year, I've learned three new things about Howard Stern: He's possibly the tallest Jew in the world; he carries a gun; and, as a cultural phenomenon, he is very much over. For this last, most pertinent, fact, he has the Office of the Independent Counsel to thank.

Stern's new TV program, The Howard Stern Radio Show, which appears Saturday nights on an ever-shrinking number of CBS-owned and affiliated stations, is a nonstarter. (Two stations--one in Arizona and one in Texas--have dropped the Stern show since it premiered Aug. 26, citing offensiveness. Its ratings hover just above zero.) It is not much different from Stern's daily radio show--Stern belches into his microphone, talks about the modest dimensions of his penis, and molests strippers. The only difference is that on television, we get to see the strippers. The penis remains hidden.
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September 11, 1998

'I'm Going to Kill You, Cracker,' And Other Greetings of the Day

Midway through the so-called Million Youth March, a teenager, perhaps 15 years of age, brushed by me on his way to the stage. I was standing near the densely packed corner of 119th Street and Lenox Avenue, surrounded by members of the Assata Shakur Freedom Fighters, the Socialist Workers Party, the Umoja Nation, along with a seller of disposable cameras, a lone Garveyite and my friend Tamar Jacoby, the author of the recently published "Someone Else's House," which argues for the revival of the integrationist idea.

The 15-year-old was wearing a T-shirt that featured a photograph of Mayor Giuliani, as well as a text message, which I could not make out. I asked him what the shirt said. He responded: "He's a cracker. He's killing all of us. And we're going to kill you too, you white cracker expletive."
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