From The Chicago Sun-Times, 4/16/04:
http://www.suntimes.com/output/eb-feature/cst-edt-ebert16.html

Stern belongs on radio just as much as Rush

BY ROGER EBERT

Like millions of Americans, I listen to Howard Stern on the radio in
the mornings.

I think he is smart, quick and funny.

Sometimes he is ''offensive,'' but to be quite frank, I am not
''offended,'' because what he says falls within the realm of words and
subjects that, as an adult, I have long been familiar with even
without the tutelage of Stern.

Unlike millions of Americans, I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh on the
radio.

One reason for that is that I am usually at the movies when he's on
the air -- an alternative I urge on his listeners.

Limbaugh does offend me when I monitor him, because he has cheapened
political discourse in this country with his canned slogans and cheap
shots.

Once you call a feminist a ''feminazi,'' what else is there to say
about feminism?

Of course you may disagree with me and prefer Limbaugh.

I may disagree with you and prefer Stern.

That is our right as Americans.

What offends me is that the right wing, secure in its own right to
offend, now wants to punish Stern to the point where he may be forced
off the air.

The big difference, of course, is that Stern's offenses usually have
to do with sex and language, while Limbaugh's have to do with
politics.

Stern offends the puritan right, which doesn't seem to respect the
American tradition of freedom of expression.

You don't have to listen to Stern.

Exercising the same freedom, I am Limbaugh-free.

And please don't tell me that Stern must be fined and driven off the
radio because he uses the ''public airwaves.''

If they are public, then his listeners are the public, and we want to
listen to him on our airwaves.

The public airwaves cannot be held hostage to a small segment that
wants to decide what the rest of us can hear -- especially now that
President Bush supports consolidating more and more media outlets into
a few rich hands.

But what if a child should tune in?

Call me old-fashioned, but I believe it is the responsibility of
parents to control their children's media input.

The entire nation cannot be held hostage so that everything on the
radio is suitable for 9-year-olds.

Nor do I know of any children who want to listen to Stern, anyway;
they prefer music.

It is a belief of mine about the movies, that what makes them good or
bad isn't what they're about, but how they're about them.

The point is not the subject but the form and purpose of its
expression.

A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values,
that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great
many Americans do indeed think and say and do.

A Limbaugh listener, on the other hand, might not have guessed from
campaigns to throw the book at drug addicts that he was addicted to
drugs and required an employee to buy them on the street.

But listen carefully.

I support Limbaugh's right to be on the radio.

I feel it is fully equal to Stern's.

I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as
patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian.

We are all familiar with Voltaire's great cry:

''I may disagree with what you say, but I shall defend, to the death,
your right to say it.''

Ideas like his helped form the emerging American republic.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission operates under an
alternative slogan:

''Since a minority that is very important to this administration
disagrees with what you say, shut up.''


____________________________________________________________

Apparently the only way the right wing feels it can win anything is to
eliminate the opposition and win by default. Well, Adolph Hitler did
it.

Harry

I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as
patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian.