Michele Bachmann and Howard Stern Spar Over Ellen

Would you believe that Ellen DeGeneres and Rosie O’Donnell are teaming up in praise of Howard Stern? Here’s Rosie on her show recently, describing why.

Howard Stern. A guy, who probably to me was my arch-nemesis for a decade at least, a guy who called me pumpkinhead and many other horrible things for over ten years. He and I have become friends and I have to say I love the guy. I was listening to his radio show, as I do daily and he was talking about what happened with Ellen DeGeneres, JC Penney, with me, with gay people in society and our culture who are so marginalized and so really prejudiced against by people in positions of power and how wrong it is and he was talking about that Rolling Stone article which you gotta pick up and you gotta get. Go to Twitter. I reposted what he said about ten times because I want people to hear it.

It made me cry. This guy. He’s really smart. He is. And I’m so happy that I call him a friend. I not only call him that, he is one. He’s really got it. He talks about it and he talks about it in a way that will move you and there’s something about straight people being able to articulate the plight of gay people in a manner that I think is more digestible for some straight people who might be more on the fence about the whole situation. It’s a bad situation. It really is.

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On his radio show Tuesday, Stern spoke about what he did to elicit this praise.

I went into like a half hour rant about how brave it was of JC Penney to stick by her and not succumb to the bullshit of these people and that Ellen DeGeneres has my support because this is despicable, it’s deplorable. I mean, my God, she’s more family friendly than any performer out there and has always been.

Stern, who is not at all perfect on the issues — he wreaks havoc on my blood pressure whenever he enters into an occasional xenophobic fit — had the self-awareness to be embarrassed by the compliments, feeling that they should be unnecessary. But more than praise from his friend Rosie, or from Ellen (who called him at home and then went to a party in his honor at Jimmy Kimmel’s house last week), Howard should be very proud of who’s attacking him.

As outlined in this article that Stern read on the air, Michele Bachmann is hitting back against him for calling her out.

I’ll tell you how desperate Michele Bachmann is for money. She’s using me to raise money. She must be desperate. So I came out and said what a shithead Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum are with their gay stance, their abortion stance, all this bullshit that they’re into, you know. So I didn’t think anything of it, I thought the woman would ignore me. She came out with a statement about me and and ask for money, a money grab. She must be really hard up, if she’s got to use me.

Michelle Bachmann speaking. (Photo credit: markn3tel)

What prompted Bachmann’s pushback? The day after the Superbowl, Stern started it by issuing a defense of Ellen.

If JC Penney fires Ellen DeGeneres, I will call on all my listeners to boycott JC Penney and I will do everything I can for Ellen DeGeneres. I mean, I was so outraged by people going on, in any public forum, in this year, 2012, and saying “Ellen doesn’t represent us, Ellen doesn’t represent families, and we shoppers at JC Penney don’t approve of her.” I mean, you’ve got to fucking be kidding me.

Now mind you, this is a broadcaster whose usual call to action is asking his audience to vote for friend David Arquette on Dancing With the Stars. Stern proceeded to laud Rolling Stone for a Matt Taibbi article and for an article on gay teens in the heartland, before entering into a genuine diatribe. Here’s where it gets fun…

This Michele Bachmann and Rick Santorum, they’re the worst two people on the planet. They get up wherever they can and they still feel comfortable getting up in front of an audience in 2012 and fucking saying shit about gays, about how they shouldn’t get married. They feel no qualm about putting out this kind of bigotry. Now, Hitler put this kind of shit out pre-World War II in Germany in beer halls. If the entire beer hall had gotten up and beaten the shit out of Hitler and kicked him in the face, you wouldn’t have had World War II and you wouldn’t have had any problems. The idea that Rick Santorum and this Michele Bachmann get up in an auditorium full of people and start to spew this horseshit about gay people…there should be shoes flying. They should be drummed out of the country. Wherever they go, they should be spat upon. If that happened, it would be glorious. I’m not advocating violence, you understand. But I’m saying, if they were ridiculed. They should be ignored, shunned, and treated as lunatics.

What I found interesting about Stern is his openness and lack of self-censorship. Of course, that’s also what makes me turn him off when he gets it wrong, although there’s much less of that as he ages and mellows.

For those of you who are interested, here’s Stern’s original rant:

See also:
Proud to Be Here: Why It Gets Better: Howard Stern Defends Ellen DeGeneres
Gay Teen 101: Howard Stern defends Ellen DeGeneres against One Million Moms
Richard Virgilio: HOWARD STERN “TALKS ABOUT GAYS IN A WAY THAT WILL MOVE YOU”
Polentical: Celebrity Odd Couple: Howard Stern & Rosie O’Donnell