With racial and social reform coming to the forefront, people are scrambling to be on the right side of history. Yet, this has become the perfect arena for Donald Trump, Jr. to continue his family's feud with Howard Stern by reminding his followers of the radio personality's sketchy past.
Trump tweeted out a clip of Howard Stern in a sketch that featured blackface during a 1993 pay-per-view New Year's Eve special. In the sketch, Stern played Ted Danson—a white man—in blackface while Sherman Hemsley portrayed Whoopi Goldberg who was Danson's girlfriend at the time. Stern uses an offensive take on African-American Vernacular English and says the n-word countless times.
On his SiriusXM radio show this morning, Howard Stern explained that the sketch was a parody of Goldberg and Danson's decision to wear blackface during the 1993 Friars Club roast. Still, he says that he regrets the decision and has since evolved.
"The shit I did was fucking crazy," Stern said per Deadline. "I’ll be the first to admit. I won’t go back and watch those old shows; it’s like, who is that guy. But that was my shtick, that’s what I did and I own it. I don’t think I got embraced by Nazi groups and hate groups. They seemed to think I was against them too. Everybody had a bone to pick with me."
"It was something in me, a drive you wouldn’t believe. As a young man, I wanted to succeed on the radio and I wanted to go fucking crazy. Emotionally it was costing me a lot. The FCC was after me, the right wing was after me, I had the Ku Klux Klan after me, threatening my life. All kinds of crazy stories. I could do 17 movies on my life, how crazy it was," he continued. "I was fined millions of dollars by the federal government, for sex. Not for race, because if you talked about race, they never cared. Look, that was the show. I went into therapy and said, what is this? Do I always have to be the guy pulling my pants down? Can I find a way to do the show where I can be a lot happier? Over the years, I did change the show."
Stern went on to say that the "big headline" is now his 1993 antics when it should really be how the Trump administration is ruining the country.
"I was able to change my approach, able to change my life and change how I communicated. If I had to do it all over again, would I lampoon Ted Danson, a white guy in blackface? Yeah, I was lampooning him and saying, I’m going to shine a light on this. But would I go about it the same way now? Probably not," he said. "At the same point, I will say, it fucking distresses me that Donald Trump Jr, and Donald, themselves won’t go into psychotherapy and change. Why not change the way you’re approaching things because, wearing a mask is not a bad thing. Telling people the actual size of the crowd at your inauguration is okay. Attacking me during the coronavirus and Black Lives Matter is absolutely fucking crazy."
