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"  Inspiration. I&amp;#039;m standing with my back to the shower. The water&amp;#039;s warm, and it&amp;#039;s hitting my head. I&amp;#039;m not wearing my glasses, so I can&amp;#039;t see anything. It&amp;#039;s all a haze. I lose focus and go inward. This radio show starts playing in my head and I go, Oh, my God, this is really funny, and I have to rush out and get it on paper. Because of the size of my penis, I like to keep it covered, so usually I wrap a towel around my waist. But there&amp;#039;s no time for hair gel. It&amp;#039;s like catching a lightning bug in a jar \u2014 get the idea down or else it&amp;#039;s gone. Sometimes I get totally crazed and call the programming guys and start rambling like a maniac. On January 9, when I go to satellite, you will hear two full channels of the most outrageous programming. The Howard 100 brand on Sirius is going to be what National Lampoon was back in the day. We&amp;#039;re going to give you sitcoms, movies, game shows \u2014 even news. We have a full-fledged news service following everything in the Howard Stern world. There are seventeen newspeople \u2014 hardcore newspeople. I gave them complete autonomy. I said, &amp;quot;If you hear I&amp;#039;m doing something wrong, you investigate me.&amp;quot; I have no say over it. I won&amp;#039;t become the FCC. I&amp;#039;m not going to censor my own news department; that would ruin the concept. They started investigating my contract because I&amp;#039;m having this battle with Viacom. They&amp;#039;re calling over to Viacom and it hits me: Oh, no! I can&amp;#039;t stop them! So I&amp;#039;m shitting bullets already. Wait! Wait! Let me show you the black book. This is where the ideas go. I can&amp;#039;t tell you everything we&amp;#039;re gonna do, but you know that show The View, right? I&amp;#039;ve got a show coming on called Crack Whore View. We take all of the topics they discuss on The View that day, then take four crack whores and let them discuss those same issues. We&amp;#039;re gonna have The Lesbian Dating Game, with a real host. Real lesbians. Play the game and guess what? We don&amp;#039;t leave you for the date. The date goes on right in the studio afterward. We hear it all. We&amp;#039;ve got Tissue Time with Heidi Cortez. Tissue Time is for every guy who can&amp;#039;t get to sleep. Heidi is not only hot, but she&amp;#039;s incredibly great at phone sex. Lucky guys are going to have phone sex with her. Heidi&amp;#039;s gonna set us all up to go to sleep. Guys, get your tissues out. And we all beat off together. Imagine, all Howard fans beating off as one! A true family... Enemies. That&amp;#039;s the big misconception: Howard&amp;#039;s not going to be fighting the system anymore, so his show isn&amp;#039;t going to be any good. That&amp;#039;s bullshit. That&amp;#039;s like saying Chris Rock&amp;#039;s HBO special would have been better if he had a censor to fight. I&amp;#039;ve always had experts predict my demise. After I left NBC, I was supposed to fail. People are going to get bored. I suck. I&amp;#039;m a shock jock. That lasts for only a year. Hey, I&amp;#039;m thirty years doing this, and I&amp;#039;m more jazzed than ever, because I&amp;#039;m finally going to get to do what I want to do. I don&amp;#039;t need a daddy supervising me. I&amp;#039;ve got my own boundaries. I&amp;#039;ve got my own rules. And I know how to be funny. I can&amp;#039;t be funny on terrestrial radio anymore. When the FCC started fining me and the religious Right had its way with us, I couldn&amp;#039;t talk about topics that I used to talk about. They hit the dump button on me twenty-six times yesterday. Every time I get to a punch line, they dump out. That means you don&amp;#039;t hear the joke. And I&amp;#039;m still number one! I wanted to do some best-of farewell shows. I can&amp;#039;t even play any of my old material. We wanted to replay this great old bit that Jessica Hahn participated in. You remember Jessica Hahn? She was this obscure Long Island girl involved in the Jim Bakker sex scandal. Well, this bit was, Jessica Hahn fucks Mr. Ed. In the bit, Mr. Ed puts a hoof in Jessica Hahn and she goes, &amp;quot;More.&amp;quot; He puts another hoof in Jessica Hahn. &amp;quot;More!&amp;quot; Finally, all four hooves are in her. And she goes, &amp;quot;Now gallop!&amp;quot; Mr. Ed goes, &amp;quot;I can&amp;#039;t.&amp;quot; And she goes, &amp;quot;I&amp;#039;m tight, aren&amp;#039;t I?&amp;quot; Now, that&amp;#039;s fuckin&amp;#039; funny. And I can&amp;#039;t replay that? People say to me, &amp;quot;Hey, Howard, how come you&amp;#039;re not doing the edgy stuff anymore?&amp;quot; Man, do you know how much that kills me? I&amp;#039;ve been subpar for ten years and I admit it. I can&amp;#039;t do what I want to do. And I can&amp;#039;t live with being subpar! I&amp;#039;ve got to be Howard Stern. Courage. Courage is standing up for what you believe in. There are so many people who aren&amp;#039;t willing to stand up. You&amp;#039;ve got to fight. Take these assholes on the religious Right. People say to me, Are you a moral person? The so-called Christian Right \u2014 they think they&amp;#039;re moral. They really believe that they&amp;#039;re moral. But they&amp;#039;re moral in the way that the Taliban is moral. They go, Howard Stern, you have naked women in your studio. I say, Yeaaaaaaaah. What&amp;#039;s wrong with being naked? I don&amp;#039;t think there&amp;#039;s anything wrong with that. I pay my taxes. I&amp;#039;m a good man. I&amp;#039;m a good father \u2014 try to be, anyway. I try to do the right things in life. But let&amp;#039;s look at these people. They want to take away a woman&amp;#039;s right to choose. But these same people want to take away affirmative action. They want these children born, but they&amp;#039;re not willing to take one of these children born into poverty and give him a handout so he can maybe get a break like George W. Bush got from his dad. God forbid we give an inner-city kid a couple of bucks to succeed in life and give him some hope. But they&amp;#039;re moral and I&amp;#039;m immoral. Well, morality is a relative thing. And what about gay rights? They want to kill all the fucking gays. That isn&amp;#039;t moral to me. Why can&amp;#039;t a guy blow another guy in peace? When people start to wake up and realize that this country has gone religious, they&amp;#039;re going to see it&amp;#039;s a big danger. Look at New Orleans. The religious Right goes, Jeeeeee-zus, save us from the hurricane! This is Jeeeeeee-zus&amp;#039;s will! This used to be a great country of science. Now you&amp;#039;ve got a president who believes in fairy tales up in the sky. Scientists go, Okay, you&amp;#039;ve got a half-assed levee in New Orleans. Spend a couple of million bucks and fix it. Then there&amp;#039;ll be no flood. You don&amp;#039;t need Jeee-zus to save you. Man can save you. This bullshit Jeee-zus stuff is going to get us all dead. You&amp;#039;ve got George Bush on one end. And you&amp;#039;ve got Osama bin Laden on the other. I&amp;#039;ve got news for you: Howard Stern is the sensible middle ground. Goddamn right I am. Truth. We go on the premise that our government is honest. But it&amp;#039;s not. We tend to believe our government officials. But we were lied to: We were told there were weapons of mass destruction. And look how ridiculous what&amp;#039;s going on with this Scooter Libby motherfucker. Is that his name? Scooter? Sounds like Skeeter. Good old boy. Scooter decides, Hey, this ambassador isn&amp;#039;t going along with the game. So we&amp;#039;ll teach this guy a lesson and out his wife, tell everyone she&amp;#039;s a CIA agent. Now, you think Dick Cheney doesn&amp;#039;t know about it? Scooter and Dick are fuckin&amp;#039; carpooling together every day. What are they talkin&amp;#039; about? &amp;quot;My wife made turkey meatballs last night....&amp;quot; No, they&amp;#039;re talking about: Let&amp;#039;s get that motherfucker. Let&amp;#039;s out his wife and wreck his life. That&amp;#039;s dirty pool. This is Watergate stuff. This is the same shit we saw with Nixon. Nixon was a screwball. There you had a president who obsessed on George McGovern, who wasn&amp;#039;t going to get two votes. He just had to do the break-in. And now these guys are going after an ambassador. Dirty pool. Dirty tricks. They shouldn&amp;#039;t even have time for that. This is a complete breakdown. And these are the guys who are going to tell me I&amp;#039;m dirty? Iraq. Here&amp;#039;s my solution: We give Saddam Hussein a nice shave, hand him back his old uniform, and put him back in office. Let him tame that fucking place. We need this guy. He&amp;#039;s the only one who can calm everybody down. Who else is going to do that? This guy was unbelievable. Sure, he had to zap a few guys on their balls to get them in line, but, man, look at what he did. He was no problem. In fact, he kept the Iranians at bay. He helped keep the balance over there. He was more afraid of the Taliban than we are. And if you really want to tame that region, I&amp;#039;ll tell you what can solve the problem: pussy. Plain and simple. Give &amp;#039;em strip clubs and whores. Nobody would want to fly a fucking plane into anything. Nobody would want to kill anybody. The problem is, these guys can&amp;#039;t even see a woman&amp;#039;s ankle. You know what? They just want pussy. They want good porno. They want to beat off. They want Howard Stern. How about this? I applied to go to Baghdad and was turned down. Not officially. But I made some inquiries. And I heard that I would never be approved. Let me tell you something: All those boys over there fighting \u2014 those eighteen- to twenty-somethings \u2014 those are my boys! I get more letters from soldiers over there. If Howard was on in Iraq, I guarantee you nobody over there would want to die. Divorce. The divorce wrecked me. I never thought I&amp;#039;d be divorced. Nobody in my family gets divorced. My ex-wife and I are very friendly. We&amp;#039;re not doing the Bruce Willis-Demi Moore thing. We&amp;#039;re not going to each other&amp;#039;s weddings. I don&amp;#039;t have her husband on my show, like Ashton Kutcher and Bruce Willis. But we&amp;#039;re friendly, and we have conversations about what the kids are up to so we can stay on the same page. But it does affect you \u2014 because when you have a disappointment like that, it makes you a fuller person. It made me a better radio performer because I went through something very painful, and now I can relate to my audience and their pain about things. It was an educational experience. Not a fun one. Not a comfortable one. But it helps you realize that maybe there&amp;#039;s more to the world than you thought and that you&amp;#039;ve got to be a little empathetic, too. It also taught me a big lesson. I&amp;#039;m afraid of tipping over again to all work and no play. I&amp;#039;ve got to remember that that&amp;#039;s what did in my marriage. I wasn&amp;#039;t paying attention to my personal life. Now I&amp;#039;m in a real good relationship with Beth. I don&amp;#039;t want to fuck that up. So all this exciting stuff may be going on professionally, but keep some balance. Make time for the people who love you. Kids. It&amp;#039;s tough to be my kids. Whoa, that&amp;#039;s Howard Stern&amp;#039;s daughter! She must be crazy. She must be wild like her old man. But they&amp;#039;re pretty well-adjusted kids. My ex-wife and I managed to keep them out of the spotlight. We sent them to public schools and were able to keep them pretty grounded, I think. One just graduated from college. One is in college. And I have a twelve-year-old. They&amp;#039;re proud of me, and they&amp;#039;re excited where things are headed. My two oldest daughters want to do a show. They&amp;#039;ll come on and talk about what it&amp;#039;s like to be my daughter. They&amp;#039;ve been on intermittently over the years. When they were really young, they interviewed the Olsen twins. But as adult women they haven&amp;#039;t been on, and they&amp;#039;ve got a lot to say. To my fans, that&amp;#039;s an important moment. And the Howard 100 news team will cover it. But I&amp;#039;m going to keep them away from Crack Whore View. I draw the line. Freedom. Ever since I announced I was leaving terrestrial radio, there&amp;#039;s been talk about regulating satellite. But to do that, they&amp;#039;ve got to change the Constitution. &amp;#039;Cause it&amp;#039;s not the public airwaves. This is the same as a book. Same as a movie. Same as a magazine. It&amp;#039;s something we choose to bring into our home. We pay for it. But they&amp;#039;re so freaked out that all of a sudden they want to regulate satellite. Why? Why did I go to on-demand? I went to on-demand after I was on cable for eleven years. Then the cable industry got word that you better clean up your act or we&amp;#039;re going to regulate cable. They were talking about me. HBO has the word cunt on. It shows full nudity and people fucking. Never had a problem. But they&amp;#039;ve got a bug up their ass about me. I must represent such a threat; they&amp;#039;re so goddamn afraid of me. It&amp;#039;s not about sex. It&amp;#039;s about honesty and freedom. So I announce that I&amp;#039;m going to satellite, this little start-up business that nobody even worried about, and \u2014 boom \u2014 now they want to regulate it. I don&amp;#039;t hear anything anymore about regulating cable TV. When I left cable TV for on-demand, suddenly the problem was cleaned up. So you know what? I&amp;#039;m going to do everybody a favor. I&amp;#039;m going to do my thing. And I hope to God the people come with me. Aging. Before I signed with Sirius, I told myself, Okay, if I do this, I&amp;#039;m going to go berserk. I&amp;#039;ve just got to be sure I&amp;#039;m really in the right frame of mind. You&amp;#039;ve got to have the fire. But, see, I have a deep psychological problem that I go to a psychiatrist for. I always feel like a beginner. I don&amp;#039;t feel like I&amp;#039;ve accomplished anything. So it keeps a fire under my ass. Whatever I&amp;#039;ve done at this point doesn&amp;#039;t matter. Twenty thousand people show up for a book signing. I sign every book and afterward I get thoroughly depressed: Oh, my God, what am I going to do next? Honestly, I couldn&amp;#039;t even enjoy the moment. It&amp;#039;s a sickness. But it keeps me young, man. When you have that, you work very hard. It doesn&amp;#039;t matter if you&amp;#039;re looking down at the world or looking up. You&amp;#039;re always hungry. So I don&amp;#039;t feel age. Sixty Minutes has been interviewing me for what must be the last sixty days. Ed Bradley goes, &amp;quot;Well, uh, you&amp;#039;re fifty-one years old and, uh, maybe you should have matured. Is farting still funny to you?&amp;quot; Maybe I&amp;#039;m still back in the locker room. But why be uptight about bowel movements and sex? We all have sex. We all have penises \u2014 except for those of us who have vaginas. We know what the score is. My audience is like my family. I&amp;#039;ve always had a picture of the guy driving in a car \u2014 my father. He would get such delight out of listening to the radio. He would pay attention to the radio \u2014 not me. So me going on the radio is always me getting my father&amp;#039;s attention. Doesn&amp;#039;t matter how old I get. There&amp;#039;s that whole psychodrama going on when you&amp;#039;re listening to my show. Checkmate. People say, Who&amp;#039;s going to pay for radio? Of course, at the beginning of any great innovation, that&amp;#039;s what&amp;#039;s said. HBO. Bottled water. Who&amp;#039;s going to pay for fucking water? You want to talk about value. Look at the guy buying a CD for twelve dollars. All he gets is a few songs. When you buy Sirius satellite radio for twelve dollars a month, you&amp;#039;ve got sixty music channels twenty-four hours a day with no commercials. Every kind of music you want. They&amp;#039;ve got an Elvis channel. Rolling Stones. Bruce Springsteen. I don&amp;#039;t give a shit what you like \u2014 it will be there. You&amp;#039;re left wing? We&amp;#039;ve got a left-wing channel. You&amp;#039;re right wing? We&amp;#039;ve got a right-wing channel. You&amp;#039;re an asshole? We&amp;#039;ve got an asshole channel. That&amp;#039;s my channel. And that&amp;#039;s for twelve dollars a month. You&amp;#039;re gonna tell me that&amp;#039;s a shitty value? I&amp;#039;ll tell you a shitty value: sitting through twenty-one minutes of commercials every hour and having no freedom on free FM. Fuck free FM. Fuck Clear Channel. Fuck Viacom. Fuck &amp;#039;em all. This is the future. I know it is. The guy I&amp;#039;m working with at Sirius was shot out of a cannon. He was a movie guy from Miramax. He understands that this is bigger than radio. We can be a content provider. I want to make movies on Friday night. I want to do development deals with talent. Don&amp;#039;t forget, I have an on-demand television deal. We&amp;#039;re going to develop the shows on the radio. We&amp;#039;re going to bring them to life on TV or over the Internet. Now we see telephones are going to have video content. People are going to want exciting new shows. Guess who&amp;#039;s going to deliver them to those phones? And all of this content will be put out on DVD. It&amp;#039;s going to be a home-run, think-tank creative spot for the universe. This isn&amp;#039;t going to be a radio show. It&amp;#039;s going to be Howard World. God bless satellite radio because I check-mated these fucks. They thought they got rid of me. And now we&amp;#039;re gonna be bigger and better than ever. When I signed the deal a year ago, Sirius was at six hundred thousand people. They said in order to justify my deal they needed a million people. Now they&amp;#039;re up to 2.2 million and projecting 3 million by the end of the year. They&amp;#039;re selling out the fucking door at the retail level to my fans. Know what? I will never disappoint my fans. This will be my greatest creation. And that&amp;#039;s just my two channels. Even if I suck, you&amp;#039;ve still got that whole other universe \u2014 which is very comforting to me, by the way. But I won&amp;#039;t suck. Not with Crack Whore View. Originally published in the January 2006 issue "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/entertainment/interviews/a1922/esq0106stern-76/>