STERN V. SPIELBERG: WELCOME TO 2018

What more delightful way to kick off the year than revisiting a legendary Howard Stern spiel leveled at Steven Spielberg back in the mid-1990s. The usually savvy Spielberg decided, for some reason, to badmouth Stern during an interview, thus provoking a wildly tasteless and hysterically rude monologue in which Stern plays both a lisping Spielberg and a straight-up Uncle Tom version of one of Spielberg's adopted African-American kids. It's fascinating listening to 90s Stern and realizing how quickly his career would have been over, ratings notwithstanding, if this material had been presented anytime over the past two or so years.

As always when confronted with criticism, Stern deploys the by-now Trumpian method of hitting back ten times as hard and without apology. The greatest thing about Stern at this time was his no-holds attack dog return punch when confronted by virtually anyone who dissed him. This was Stern with bite, pre-Sirius, and as Sarah Silverman pointed out during a recent Stern interview, it was this Howard that would have properly dealt with the President, as opposed to the aging Stern who stays weirdly quiet about Trump. Silverman said that she often puts the show on and thinks its a rerun since Stern doesn't comment on anything controversial anymore. "And then Bradley Cooper turns out to be your guest and plugs his latest movie and I realize that it isn't a rerun".

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