The Media Research Center’s Tim Graham and Brent Bozell dedicated much of their Aug. 5 column to bashing “sex-crazed radio shock jock” Howard Stern and sneering at the idea that he should be allowed to interview Hillary Clinton:
Stern, who left broadcast radio for satellite radio so he could be as raunchy as possible and make his millions dwelling on the lowest common denominator for the demographic, men ages 18 to 34, has a less-than-zero chance of scoring a Clinton interview. The risk-averse woman, who hasn’t held a press conference yet in 2016, isn’t going to upset all her feminist supporters to please Stern.
If any Clinton adviser wanted to suggest to her that it could be a great opportunity to address the gender gap, one can easily look at what accomplished women discuss on his show. Take a Newsmax headline from a year ago that read, “Megyn Kelly Talks with Howard Stern: Breasts, Penises, Sex.” Those are the lifelong obsessions of Stern (and his audience).
It was an act of media trolling for The Washington Post’s Geoff Edgers to help Stern make his sales pitch to Clinton. Edgers insisted Stern’s show is “simply the best broadcast entertainment interview show around.”
Stern gave the Post an hour-long interview, but somehow Edgers didn’t ask why an aspirant of the highest office in the land should lower herself to an interview with a guy who played fictional superhero Fartman and sold videotapes called “Butt Bongo Fiesta.”
Graham and Bozell go on to note that Clinton’s fellow presidential candidate, Donald Trump, is a “friend” of Stern, but only in passing while complaining that Edgers asked Stern to criticize Trump for his attacks on the media while Hillary Clinton hasn’t held a press conference in months.
But Trump does not get the guilt-by-association treatment from Graham and Bozell for being friends with Stern. But it was just a few months ago that Graham was somewhat more willing to use Stern to attack Trump.
In May, Graham complained that the Washington Post did an article about Trump’s “sex boasts….and sex life” as discussed on Stern’s show, whining that “the Post didn’t locate these 19-year-old quotes when there were still Republican opponents in the race appealing for the conservative-Christian vote.” But as we noted, neither did the MRC or its “news” division, CNSNews.com — both entities completely ignored the Trump-Stern interviews when they first surfaced three months earlier, making Graham’s bashing of the Post for doing the story his employer refused to do utterly hypocritical.
Graham and Bozell concluded their column by huffing that Stern is “not going to criticize his pal” Trump. And neither will Bozell or Graham.