What Happened to Howard Stern?

What an odd article to be posted on hacker news. Stern is the consumate shape shifting media personality, in turns erudite, vulgar, brash, sensitive - all to keep the listeners tuned in and consuming the ads. He's a variant of the Kardashians - famous for being famous having adopted the style of an eighties rock musician.

Anything to stay in the limelight...

Bill Murray has a legitimate problem most of us can't even imagine. He is a living legend. Every interaction he has is burdened by outsized expectations he cannot control. Where you deride, I feel only sympathy.

Late career Howard Stern show is a fantastic show. Yes, there are the usual collections of low-brow humor, stunts and fart jokes. However, every now and then there will be an A or B level movie/TV/sport star on and Howard can spend an hour or hour and half extracting every little juicy story out of them. He can get people to tell all kinds of stories about their lives and keeps them on task and focused on telling the story. You hang on every word and every sentence and you just don't want to get out of your car when you listen to him. I really believe that there is simply no better interviewer than Howard Stern. He has the ability and the medium to do such a fantastic job.

I'm seriously surprised its taken this long for the Times and the media in general to realize what an incredible interviewer he is. He pulls stuff out of people you never hear anywhere.

I can say some of the celebs they have on there I truly despised, then I hear Stern interview them and come away actually liking them. He just seems to get people to open up and then tell some heartfelt stories.

Case in point - never a huge Billy Joel fan. Stern had him in a few years back. Billy sat at a piano during the interview and would plunk around and sing parts of songs while Stern asked questions about everything. It was simply one of the best interviews I've heard. So laid back, and Billy is one smart cat. So many things I learned about him and how his brain ticks and his process for creating music.

I came away from that having a huge change of heart and a ton more respect for what he's done in the industry. No one, and I mean no one, could have an interview like that with Billy. I'm convinced Stern was the only guy capable of pulling out the stuff that he did and the piano and everything, just amazing.

The other interview I will always remember was the TV show he had where he would interview celebs. He was the last person to interview Phil Hartman, with his wife there no less, days before he was murdered. Another great interview that showed a lot of his insecurities and how talented he really was. At the end, Stern had this list of accents (around 8-10 I think) and Hartman, in classic fashion whipped through them all, flawlessly I might add to end the interview.

I think if you weed through all the sexual innuendos and stripper games, you can see not only is Stern incredibly talented as an interviewer, but the love he has for his guests and the rest of the people he works with (Robin, Fred, Ba Ba Booey, Scott, Richard and Sal) is clear.

I always figured that most people that know of the Kardashians know of them as just some amorphous blob. I know the name, know they are famous for being famous, but couldn't tell you anything in particular about any of them. I don't even know how many there are, and until reading your post, didn't even make the connection to the OJ case.