|
|
|
|
Stern Rules for Stern Men
by Jay Ruttenberg
There's one word behind the collapse of Howard Stern's 21-year marriage --
obsession. The super-popular radio shock jock became so obsessed with his
work that he no longer had time to spend with his wife Alison and their
three daughters, a source close to Howard revealed. ... 'This is a terribly
painful time for Howard, even though he's not wearing his heart on his
sleeve. He knows the reality is that he chose his career over his family.'
--The National Enquirer
It would be an insult to the disc jockey's true devotees if I called myself a Howard Stern fan. For the last five years or so my alarm clock has been set for 11:11 a.m., which means that, with rare exception, by the time I open my ears in the morning his radio show has ended. When I do happen to catch the Stern show -- when the sun somehow outmaneuvers my window shade, when I have to pick somebody up at the airport, when I consume too much cereal milk the previous night -- I vow to shift my sleeping schedule so I can listen more frequently. But I never manage to do this, and so I never listen to Howard Stern.
I have, however, followed the deejay closely enough to understand the magnitude of his marital separation. Assuming that it is not an extremely intense publicity stunt (he wouldn't dare!), this is, by a long shot, the most "shocking" act of his public life.
Contrary to popular opinion, Howard Stern does not represent any of the following:
lowest common denominator potty humor
degradation of American society
complete breakdown of FCC regulations
national obsession with cheap (and often lesbian) eroticism
criminally bad hair
Rather, Stern is the disgusted clown with a motor-mouth of sewage and a heart of sugar. His brains aren't where he sits but where he applies Carmex, and his standards aren't as low a junk bond dealer's but as high as a junk bond dealer. He is America's poet laureate for those who prefer their brows low and medullas oblongata'd. He is comedically liberated to fondle Penthouse models in public, yet personally staid enough to stick by his comparatively dumpy wife long after the ascendance of his star. If he bragged excessively about his faithfulness to Mrs. Stern, it is because that faithfulness was such a delightful anomaly, both in the gossip page fast lane and the contemporary world where the little people live. This faithfulness was the deejay's ultimate ace card: While Robin Quivers' presence on his show makes it possible for Stern to get away with ostensibly racist humor, his wide-eyed devotion to his wife opened the door for raunchy sex jokes. But above all, the couple's romance was obviously
on the legit. And that's just plain charming.
That the Sterns are now the Stern and the Stern due to the Mr.'s workoholism -- not any infidelities, not the fact that he fondled Penthouse models in public for the past two decades, not the fact that the deejay repeatedly wished fatal cancer on Alison so that he could sleep with the hot young thangs that were so attracted to his celebrity -- is just what's so depressing. As a friend sighed after hearing the news: "If that crazy marriage couldn't work ... what could?"
If the Sterns' marriage flopped, do any of us have a prayer? If Howard Stern eventually ran out of interesting things to tell his wife, can any of us remain engaging after two decades of marriage? If Alison Stern left a husband because he worked too much, when a hefty chunk of that work was devoted to pronouncing his love for her (just watch Stern's downright icky movie, Private Parts), well ...
And should it not be national news when any person -- famous or not -- chooses his job (what we do to survive) over his personal life (the reason we want to survive)?
Howard Stern is often described as a "vulgar" entertainer. He exposes his pasty white flabby middle-age butt cheeks and tags himself the "Fartman," and people call him vulgar. He sits on a toilet and asks television viewers to inspect his poo, and people call him vulgar. He goes into excruciating detail about the size of his genitalia, his masturbatorial habits, his fondness for women's bosoms, and people call him vulgar. These are not vulgar acts; these are comedy routines.
The only act of true vulgarity that Howard Stern has committed thus far -- and the poor bastard knows it -- was when he chose his career over his gal.
Because every man has two options: he can work; or he can stare into his wife's eyes for the rest of eternity. It is virtually impossible to do both, unless one happens to find a gig staring into his wife's eyes (these are notoriously rare posts, even for those with degrees in optometry).
Both of life's paths have their distinct advantages, as is illustrated in the chart below:
WORK
monthly paychecks
health benefits
stock options
office parties
casual Fridays |
STARING INTO WIFE'S EYES
internal ecstasy
a blissful existence
feeling of perpetual transcendence
a shared secret lexicon and world view
the inimitable knowledge that you are sharing the unique beauty of life with the one person who you can truly refer to and respect as your soul mate and companion and, pardon the hackneyed yet clearly beautiful cliché, "better half"
|
But I mean duh! Is the ultimate decision not obvious? Does work -- or "art" or "success" or "pride" or "autonomy" -- hold a single, measly candle to the proposed alternative? Is it not time we jettison our briefcases, our stethoscopes, our paint brushes, our radio microphones -- our petty ambitions -- and return to our wives' eyes? Are we not human?
Howard Stern, renounce your radio show! Abdicate the lonely throne you must sit on day after day as our self-proclaimed King of All Media! Say a cordial farewell to Robin Quivers and Fred Norris and the mustachioed man you call Baba Booey, and say hello to Alison's eyes! It is not too late! It can be done! It has been done! The Beatles did it, for chrissake! The Beatles!
***
Q: It's over a year since Linda McCartney died of cancer. How is her
husband, Paul, holding up? -- D. Jones, Allentown, Pa
A: Not well, judging from our observation at a recent gala in L.A. for
People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, where Paul McCartney, 57,
presented an award in Linda's honor to Pamela Anderson Lee. During a
video showing Paul and Linda playing with animals, the former Beatle
wept inconsolably.
-- Parade
Anybody who prefers the Beatles music to the solo work of John Lennon and Paul McCartney is, obviously, a latent homosexual.
We have reached this conclusion through years of methodic and melodic research, during which we sequestered teams of the finest German sociologists, Zurichese psychiatrists, Japanese electrical engineers, and American day traders in a large think tank with nothing but records and books and food and family and friends and pets and a full sized volleyball court.
It is a very, very simple idea:
The Beatles were, to a certain extent, the fully animated homoerotic fantasy of Brian Epstein, their manager, who was very smart and very gay. (Listen closely to "Baby You're a Rich Man" and hear John Lennon replace the line "baby you're a rich man too" with "baby you're a rich fag Jew," in joking reference to Ep.)
Manager Epstein played a crucial role in the Beatles early success. Namely, he helped sanction their transmutation from rough, leather-jacketed Liverpool punks to gray-suited, skinny-tied, mop-haired British dolls. As some feminist author explains in some book I read in college, the Beatles' long hair and boyishly feminine demeanor made them sexually accessible to preteen female fans who found earlier rockers like Elvis too ... nasty. And, for a 10-year-old girl (whose modern day equivalent is worshipping the Backstreet Boys and N'Sync), the Pelv was a bit too manly, as well. But these Beatles? Hah! The Fab Four sang together, dressed together, combed hair together, giggled together -- why they were practically a travelling slumber party! Which, as the feminist-whose-name-eludes-me notes, is a none too threatening way to ease into carnal awareness when you're a 10-year-old girl growing up in a sexually suppressed society.
Like all good boy groups, Epstein and the four musicians encouraged this illusion. Lennon's marriage to his first wife was viewed as a potential albatross and kept as clandestine as possible -- perhaps so Beatles fans could foster their own dreams of becoming Mrs. John Lennon; more likely so they could picture Ringo in that role. The image of camaraderie is laid out most blatantly in a scene from the movie Help!: the four Beatles finish a hard day of play and disperse to what appear to be four separate homes, lined one next to the other. When the fab ones step inside, the camera goes with them, and the viewer sees that -- lo and behold -- the interior walls dividing the four houses have been knocked down. It's one big home. The four lads from Liverpool do live together after all! These guys just can't get enough of each other!
So everything is cruising along just fine until Brian Epstein overdoses and dies, John meets Yoko, Paul meets Linda, and the Beatles split up and go their separate ways. Meanwhile, rock fans across the world assail Ono for being Asian yet indomitable, concoct schemes to reunite the four "boys," and agree that the solo stuff is third rate fluff, particularly when Linda joins Paul and Yoko joins John.
All four Beatles insisted that the band's break-up had little to do with Yoko's arrival. But her presence was clearly a factor. Lennon (probably the earth's most desired man at the time) and Ono (perhaps the only ugly Japanese woman in history) were absolutely enraptured with one another. They were also determined to change the world. And while this may have been a baby-boomedly pompous notion when it came to things like publicly lying in a fancy bed in order to counteract Western materialism, the pair's thoughts on coupledom were somewhat more realistic. Namely, they refused to draw a line between going to work and staring into each other's eyes, which explains the photographs of Yoko sitting next to John (as well as Paul, George, and Ringo) in the recording studio. The other Beatles weren't crazy about her presence, nor were their fans, but to hell with all of that.
And really, there's no way that Paul did not sympathize with his songwriting mate. If Lennon was a closet romantic in the classic bad-boy mold, ol' puppy-eyed Macca made no scruples about his sappy, sappy heart. While Lennon's sporadically arty non-Beatles recordings can be tagged self-indulgent (and they usually are), the obsessive super-pop that Paul made with Wings matches it pound for indulgent pound.
HE LET LINDA SING, FOR GODSAKE!
The finest cerebral pop giant the world has ever known handed the microphone to his new bride and said "sing with me, honey!" And when she said "Paul dear, I'm a wonderful photographer, activist, wife, mother, and future preparer of frozen vegetarian dinner entrees, but I can't sing worth spit," he said "I don't care! I want to look across the stage and see you there! John gets to work with Yoko. Come on, Linda, pleeeeease." (And she said, "Oh, all right.")
Most people hate Linda's voice, but that just means that they don't believe in true love. Because the post-Beatles recordings of Paul McCartney, as well as John Lennon, were consummate celebrations of modern romance. If the music sounds half-cooked, it is because the creators had more important things on their minds than lyrics and bridges and the best way to record a bass drum. The Beatles had all the elements in place besides the most important one: the love between Paul McCartney and John Lennon was not real; they were both committed heterosexuals. The solo music of Lennon and McCartney, on the other hand, represents a perverse type of unadulterated beauty. It is the sound of men staring into their wives' eyes for all of eternity.
|
|
|
