Stern embodies emerging U.S. values

  Gustavo Arellano There is a method to
Gustavo’s madness. E-mail him at [email protected].
Click Here for more articles by Gustavo Arellano

America, outraged at the Sept. 11 attacks, raised millions of
dollars to assist the victims’ families while continuing to
bomb other humans. America ignorantly attacks Arabs, Muslims and
anyone remotely looking like these ethnicities, because Americans
don’t bother to make the distinction. America has long hair,
a flabby butt and is obsessed with big breasts. America is Howard
Stern.

For years, the N.Y.-based syndicated DJ has delighted and
enraged millions of listeners with his reporting of America’s
seedy side ““ its drunken dwarves, sordid celebrities and
love/hate relationship with minorities and women.

Stern shouldn’t be dismissed as an insignificant shock
jock that does anything for ratings, though. More than any other
public figure, he personifies the post-Sept. 11 American. America
is turning into Sternistan, fart noises and all. This does not bode
well for the image of the U.S. as a nation tolerant of the
international community.

The most egregious sin of the post-Sept. 11 American has been
cultural ignorance, a Stern trademark. Government leaders have
urged our nation to realize that “Arab”,
“Muslim” and “terrorist” are not
interchangeable terms. Nevertheless, attacks ““ whether verbal
or physical ““ against anyone who remotely resembles an Arab
or Muslim have risen dramatically.

Americans simply have not bothered to distinguish or appreciate
cultural and ethnic nuances. As a result, Sikh ice cream vendors
have been threatened with baseball bats, Pakistani restaurants are
burned to the ground and even dark-skinned, bearded Latinos have
been victims of attacks.

Meanwhile, the prototype for America’s cultural idiocy has
continued unabated as Stern’s stereotyping has reached new
levels of ignorance. When speaking about the Taliban, Stern uses an
accent that sounds more like Apu from “The Simpsons”
than any Arab or Muslim accent (as if there’s a universal
Arab/Muslim accent to begin with). When a listener pointed out that
using the mistaken accent unfairly implicates Indians and
Pakistanis as terrorists even though they are our allies, Stern
dismissed the comment as irrelevant. Hey, as long as they have a
beard, wear a turban or burqua, and talk with funny accents, they
can be terrorists, right?

Petty differentiation is a Sternism that has also increasingly
characterized the new American patriotic discourse. As Stern
reported live the unfolding events of Sept. 11, listeners called in
demanding that all Arabs and Muslims in the U.S. be put in
internment camps. Stern immediately rejected that idea, saying that
it was wrong to scapegoat an entire group for the actions of a few.
But Stern’s newfound morality didn’t last long, as he
added that the U.S. should turn countries that support terrorism
into “parking lots” and kill all Palestinian children
lest they grow up to be terrorists.

Similarly, many Americans are repulsed by reports of violence
against Arabs and Muslims in the States, yet these same people have
no problem supporting a war that consists of bombing Arabs and
Muslims indiscriminately, regardless of their affiliation with
terrorism. An Arab American is an Afghan Islamic fundamentalist is
a terrorist in Stern’s and America’s imagination. This
distinction ““ making life hell for a group of innocents that
is virtually similar to those that we pay lip service tolerance to
here ““ is both myopic and disgusting.

The only good thing that the American people and Stern have done
during their War of Ignorance is fund-raising. Americans raised
millions for the families of the victims and donated so much blood
that the Red Cross was forced to dump thousands of gallons of the
precious resource. Stern, meanwhile, announced the establishment of
the Howard Stern Relief Fund. At his urging, listeners donated over
$3 million and he has taken great care to properly manage the
fund.

However, raising millions for the victims of an attack while at
the same time supporting a massive bombing campaign seems
hypocritical, at least from a humanitarian perspective. But this
does not matter to Stern or Americans, both of whom will cite the
World Trade Center attacks as justification for violence on our
behalf. Who cares if a couple thousand innocents are killed along
the way?

The implications of a Sternified America are serious.
Stern’s reaction to the war in general has been nothing short
of racist jingoism and Americans have acted in a largely similar
fashion. If America is becoming more and more like Stern, as the
overwhelming support for the war and outbreaks of cultural
ignorance testify to, the international community will further
perceive the U.S. as a boorish bully whose self-worth comes from
lashing out at those that stand in its way.