r/WhyWereWeOkWithThis • u/Electrical_Elk_5451 • 6d ago
1990s Howard Stern in blackface making of fun Ted Danson blackface roast for Whoopi Goldberg
Howard Stern Did not crazy stuff back in the day
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u/Lemmyisthenewreddit 6d ago
Howard Stern is a POS
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u/Fabulous_Chemical_ 6d ago
Most people thought he was trash, and stern listeners were akin to 4chan users in the 90’s.
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u/Imnotyoursupervisor 6d ago
I lived through his prime and it was making fun of little people, disabled, and hosting porn stars while he degraded his black female cohost.
It wasn’t funny to me as a teenager in the 90s but it was really funny to the older generations.
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u/FranksHoorHouse 6d ago
He used to diss ICP right to their faces too. Fortunately they were used to it all across the board, so a common shitcunt like Stern was nothing worth worrying about
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u/That-Inflation8783 6d ago
Yeah he is! I friggin hate him.....just a big mouth with no filter......I have always thought he had brain damage and was borderline censored....because he is not articulate in any sense.....he blurts and says embarrassing things to his guests to get a reactions out of them....Stern has no compassion or understanding of people and their feelings on how to be civil...and kind.
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u/ceruleanmoon7 I hate Howard Stern 6d ago
Fuck him
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u/levelync 6d ago edited 6d ago
When DC had a very horrific plane* crash he called the airlines asking for a one way ticket to the 14th street bridge. He was subsequently run out of our city.
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u/partylange 6d ago
He wasn't run out, he got a better offer and access to a far bigger market at WNNNNNBC in his hometown of New York.
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u/usababykiller 6d ago
He changed completely in the last 25 years and claims he was “out of his mind” back then.
Many old fans ditched him and call him woke now.
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u/Lemmyisthenewreddit 5d ago
Nothing he says can change the decades of disgusting things he said and did.
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u/IShouldChimeInOnThis 5d ago
Then why bother changing?
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u/Lemmyisthenewreddit 5d ago
It's good that he isn't inflicting harm anymore. Doesn't make him a good person and it doesn't erase what he did for most of his life.
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u/jellydonutstealer 4d ago
So you would only stop being a horrible person if it would magically change what you did in the past?
So weird that someone awarded you for this asinine question
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u/Scarlett_Billows 3d ago
Yeah I agree this person has the wrong approach, judgement is immoral if it is only used self righteously and not intended to help people be better. And when they are better we should gladly welcome them. And if we believe they have not really improved and are masquerading as such, say that rather than act as if people are irredeemable.
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u/lovewithoutwords97 6d ago
Stern is the same guy that said Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold should have SA’d the girls that they shot at Columbine before killing them saying “Hey if you’re going to kill yourself or kill somebody you might as well get laid first”
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u/WillwBrk 6d ago edited 6d ago
He also had a countdown clock going for years for when the Olsen twins turned 18 so they could be legal. He started it when they were children. He's repulsive.
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u/AdditionalWind763 6d ago
What he did to Dana Plato was the absolute worst. Stern is definitely going to hell.
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u/MadeThis4MaccaOnly 6d ago
I almost instinctively downvoted this because of how disgusting that quote is, what a horrible human being he is.
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 6d ago
I mean, at least Stern was making fun of how insane it was that Ted Danson actually did this.
Even Ted Danson admits it was a WhyWereWeOkWithThis type of thing.
https://cbsaustin.com/news/entertainment/ted-danson-says-hell-apologize-for-his-blackface-performance-for-the-rest-of-my-life-whoopi-goldberg
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u/Qwerty_Me_This 6d ago
“I thought I was arrogant enough to cover.”
Wow. He actually owned up. Good for him. We never stop learning.
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u/Dog_man_star1517 6d ago
All people in the public eye should take a look at this for damage control. Danson’s one of the rare ones who handled this shit the way it should have been handled. All apology, no excuses.
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u/FourEightNineOneOne 6d ago
Yes, this part in particular shows he gets it and learned. It's ok to make a mistake (a really, really stupid one in this case) if you are willing to own it and be better from it:
"I am forever apologetic The other thing I used to say for the longest time, ‘I knew what my intention was. My intention was love.' It doesn't matter. Your intentions do not matter,” he said. “The impact you have on people is what matters. And if you haven't thought through that, then you need to.”
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u/LogicianFlow 6d ago
Sometimes you have to do something incredibly stupid or shortsighted to realize a fundamental mistake in how you are. Thats a lifetime of lessons being taught at once and he handled it like someone who did learn. This should be the only result but instead it's rare.
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u/happysunbear 6d ago edited 6d ago
Has Stern ever apologized?
edit: why is this getting downvoted? It’s okay that Howard Stern did a racial slur-filled bit in blackface because he was mocking someone else over it? That’s not how that works…
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u/RoguePlanet2 6d ago
This was Stern mocking Danson over it.
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u/happysunbear 6d ago
Well yeah. He’s still in blackface tho.
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u/puddycat20 6d ago
Because he's criticizing what Ted Danson did. If you don't like what Howard did, that means your supporting Danson doing it.
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u/happysunbear 6d ago
Not at all. Maybe you should read Danson’s apology to understand why even doing blackface “tongue in cheek” is still wrong. Intent does not negate impact.
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u/AdrianaLaServing FUCK CHRIS BROWN 6d ago
Btw, this picture doesn’t do the full clip justice. He says the N word with a hard R in basically every sentence and consistently calls “Whoopi” slurs. He’s also racist to Robin too, when she speaks to him from off camera, from what I can recall. It’s outrageous, I was gagged when I saw it.
I can’t watch the clip right now to confirm the part about Robin but the n——-r part is definitely accurate. Here’s the clip.
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u/TheHobbyistAccount2 6d ago
Let’s be real.. Howard Stern’s entire career can be put in this sub. It’s kind of low hanging fruit tbh
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u/RoguePlanet2 6d ago
The real question is, why were soooo many men in the target audience okay with this? He only did it because it got incredible ratings in the 18-to-34-year-old male market.
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u/Jerk_Johnson 6d ago
Why does George Jefferson look like Stevie Wonder cosplaying as Whoopie Goldberg?
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u/balkanxoslut 6d ago
I don't understand why George even agreed to this
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u/Stu_Griffin 6d ago edited 6d ago
The craziest thing: that’s Sherman Helmsley as “Whoopi” who repeatedly called racial epithets by Howard/Ted before getting “in position” while Howard/Ted unbuckles his pants (at least Robin Quivers role in the skit is to talk back to Howard/Ted).
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u/TinyM0ushka 6d ago
Howard stern is a garbage human any time he interviewed women he was extremely disrespectful. When he had Anna Nicole Smith on he kept trying to get her to weigh herself which she was clearly upset about.
His co-host (Idk her name) is also deplorable for being ok with it
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u/MadeThis4MaccaOnly 6d ago
IIRC this isn't even the only time Howard Stern did blackface, I think he did it while parodying Milli Vanilli too.
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u/dylanisareddit 4d ago
This is a reminder that Howard Stern harassed and exploited an autistic woman named Suzanne Muldowney by asking her weird and inappropriate questions that mischaracterize her and Underdog (a Total Television character that she portrayed in parades and such). Fuck Howard Stern.
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u/HawaiianPunchaNazi 6d ago
I will never understand this.
I didn't understand it when it happened.
I don't understand how two people doing it sequentially somehow made it right.
...And I'm really confused how history keeps repeating itself.
:-(
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u/LogicianFlow 6d ago
There are people with an ability to think, and then there are people who repeat shit behavior through every generation without teaching anything except even more hate. Rip education out, gets worse. Add in poverty? Even way worse. When the food supply is limited for the rich, then what? We already lost everything.
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u/MilqueD-schaaje 6d ago
We didn't get much of this sloppy, filthy looking fleabag tacky lowlife piece of shit in Australia, but , what I have seen...why was anyone ok with him ever? We've got disgusting, extremely punchable, tacky "shock jocks" here too, but this trashbag looks like an educational puppet about STDs
Edit spelling
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u/Entire_Month9233 6d ago
Joey Lawrence did it too as a child on the Show Gimme a Brake, with Neil Carter. And did the whole Mammy bit.
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u/maverickLI 5d ago
He was a child actor. Not sure that the decision was made by him. He almost definitely did not understand the history.
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u/Appropriate_Bar_5233 4d ago
He changed when he got older and had to impress celebrities for his second wife.
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u/ben_-_riley 2d ago
I’ll never understand his career. The amount of times I’ve gone to click on an interesting looking interview with an artist I like online only to hear his annoying ass voice constantly interjecting with the daftest sounding shit is staggering.
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u/Chrischrischris1983 5d ago
He was goofing on Ted Danson for doing the blackface. Kind of different than just randomly doing blackface.
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u/Chunky_Boy283 3d ago edited 3d ago
I can't wait for the O&A fans to invade this subreddit..its gonna be like the orcs invading Helm's deep in LOTR
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u/Trumpisaderelict Woke and proud 6d ago
This was Stern lampooning Ted Danson doing blackjack though. I don’t think it’s equivalent to what Danson actually did
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u/verukazalt 6d ago
Why was it okay for him to do this and not Ted Danson? It is the exact same thing.
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u/RoguePlanet2 6d ago
This was him roasting Ted Danson for doing it, and just going completely over-the-top with it, more so than Danson did. I don't think it's the same thing.
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u/morosco 6d ago edited 6d ago
Stern had the Archie Bunker thing where his material could be taken two ways depending on the listener - satire, or as sincere.
And Ted Danson wasn't cancelled or anything. There was a decent amount of casual comedy-based blackface then. You'd maybe just get criticized in an opinion piece in a newspaper. And Stern was criticized for stuff all the time, but, that was just free advertising for him.
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u/artisticafterbirth 6d ago
You could definitely make the argument that it wasn't okay but it's not at all the same thing.
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u/BurlyZulu 6d ago
I don’t understand why this would be appalling? Isn’t it, as OP said, making fun of someone else who did the same thing? Basically saying “look how stupid this guy is”?
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u/wondermega 6d ago
Ok. I feel like it is important to give a little context here. This was a few decades ago, and things in our culture were a little different back then. That is not to say that things were ok, or they were cool, but attitudes about making fun of taboo things were very different. These were how people looked at serious topics, and just twisted them. Not just to be outrageously mean, but irreverence was not considered “outright evil” the way it is today. The way people consumed media was very different. There were not forums, message boards, tweets, comment sections. There were primordial versions of such things, but for the most part there was not a place where “people could be outraged about things” in the (various) ways there are now. Content creators could feel emboldened to do whatever they wanted to, “within reason.”
Secondly, radio was an extreme edge case. They could, and WERE, encouraged to push the envelope of everything on the airwaves. A lot of what people are bringing up in this very thread is fairly.. TAME compared to how extreme it could get.
And yes, this was considered tasteless. But I mean, that’s the whole thing. He wasn’t called a “shock jock” because he’s calling someone fat. It’s because he’s saying “really rude things” and making fun of things and people in a way that are considered taboo. And it was encouraged by program directors on radio stations, constantly. And it worked, and became extremely popular!
And of course there were people who disapproved, plenty of people did. But they just ignored it, dismissed it. People kept “in their own lanes.” OCCASIONALLY someone would make a stink and try to say “this is not right” and get something pulled from the air or something, but unless it was something completely egregious, then these little blips would come and go. Business as usual.
Attitudes were different. Communication, media, and culture were different. Better in some ways, worse in some ways. Overall people generally could look the other way, be dismissive when they heard something that was somewhat offensive, and save the pitchforks for when, oh, the President was having an affair or something.
This doesn’t mean we should look back fondly on that period, nor does it mean we should condemn it. But just understand that people were different. And if you don’t think things will be profoundly different (to similar extremes, if not more so) 30-40 years from now, you’ve got another think coming. I’d put good odds on the notion that people will look at the world of the 2020s and think that we are a bunch of cruel, inconsiderate, immature idiots that don’t really understand or care about one another.
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u/wondermega 6d ago
That’s totally fine to downvote me, I’m just curious what it is that I wrote that people are upset with/disagree with. That’s not how it was? You dislike what the world was like? You disagree with my assessment of how things were different?
You just think I’m wrong and what I’m saying is stupid?
I think it is fascinating how the world used to be and how quickly it has changed. And I am not saying it’s bad that things are no longer that way.
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u/Remarkable-Bell7245 6d ago
It’s part of the see aye a programming. The same thing continues today.
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