And I can't stand the man

Howard Stern. Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.

The shock jock says radio colossus Clear Channel fired him because he criticized George Bush -- and he's sure as hell not going to go quietly.  Salon article #1 Declaring a "radio jihad" against President Bush, syndicated morning man Howard Stern and his burgeoning crusade to drive Republicans from the White House is shaping up as a colossal media headache for the GOP, and one they never saw coming. The pioneering shock jock, "the man who launched the raunch," as the Los Angeles Times once put, has emerged almost overnight as the most influential Bush critic in all of American broadcasting, as he rails against the president hour after hour, day after day to a weekly audience of 8 million listeners. Never before has a Republican president come under such withering attack from a radio talk show host with the influence and national reach Stern has. "The potential impact is huge," says Charles Goyette, talk-show host at KFYI in Phoenix. "And it's not just with the 8 million people who tune it, it's that he breaks the spell. Everybody's been enchanted by Bush, that he's a great wartime leader and to criticize him is unpatriotic. Now Stern pounds him every day and it shatters that illusion that the man is invincible and he shouldn't be criticized." "He's got one of the biggest audiences in all of radio, and perhaps the most loyal," says Michael Harrison, publisher of Talkers magazine, the nonpartisan monthly that covers radio's news/talk industry. "And that's why he's so dangerous for the White House." Stern had strongly backed Bush's war on Iraq, but in the past two weeks, he has derided the president as a "Jesus freak," a "maniac" and "an arrogant bastard," while ranting against "the Christian right minority that has taken over the White House." Specifically, Stern has assailed Bush's use of 9/11 images in his campaign ads, questioned his National Guard service, condemned his decision to curb stem cell research and labeled him an enemy of civil liberties, abortion rights and gay rights. In other words, it's the kind of free campaign rhetoric the Democratic National Committee couldn't have imagined just one month ago. ...Anecdotally, those daily phone calls from listeners -- mostly men -- who tell Stern they usually don't vote, but this year they're definitely going to vote against Bush (and it's usually against, Bush not for Sen. John Kerry) cannot be comforting to the Bush/Cheney '04 strategists. "Karl Rove and the White House would have to be brain-dead to not know they have a problem here," says Goyette.   Salon article #2

Well, actually, they may well be brain dead. I know they're heartless.

Approximately 8 million listeners tune in each week. And at any given moment during his four-hour program roughly 1.4 million people are tuned in. By way of comparison, that's more than the number of morning viewers at any given time watching Fox News, CNN and MSBNC -- combined. ... "They're addicted to this guy and that's an awesome power," says Harrison. "Stern has moral authority with these people, in part because he has not been beating the drum for a political agenda for all these years." It's that relative absence of political discussion on Stern's show in the past that might make the current anti-Bush barrage more influential. "The fact that his audience does not tune in to him to hear about politics means that he is not just preaching to a choir, in the way that most of the conservative talk-show hosts are doing. ...Known mostly for his libertarian take on politics, in 1992 he made news by endorsing Republican Christie Todd Whitman for governor of New Jersey, and she then won in an upset over Democrat Jim Florio. (She repaid the favor in 1995 by naming a New Jersey highway rest stop after the jock.) Stern has also backed Republican George Pataki for New York governor. "When Stern says he helped Pataki win," says Goyette, "I don't think anybody doubts that." That's because of the bond Stern has built with his fans. "He's got a passionately loyal audience, which includes many extremely affluent and white-collar listeners," notes Paul Colford, who wrote an authorized biography of Stern, "The King of All Media." "However he wants to play his most recent grievance, he's got a nucleus of tens of thousands of fanatics who are willing make the phone calls and send e-mails and show up at Times Square to protest, whatever the course of action may be."

I don't know. Somehow this is not as encouraging as it is just scary.