Dirty Laundry

I listen to Howard Stern. Not because I think he’s the King of All Media or even because I think he’s especially funny. I have a long commute to and from work and he’s a familiar voice after all these years. Many times he gets things completely wrong. His knowledge of pop culture and music often makes him sound like someone’s crotchety grandpa. The man’s been in radio for most of his life but never heard of Solomon Burke? Really?

But sometimes he does get it right. Or sometimes he just allows “right” to happen. That happened this past week. Living in America I can’t seem to escape the bizarre cult of celebrity that surrounds us. Really it’s shocking. News programs are being replaced by tabloid shows. You can’t escape a store of any variety without encountering shocking cover stories of celeb infidelities and bad hair choices. It makes me yearn for the days of two-headed alien Elvis babies…at least we KNEW those weren’t real (were they?).

Of the many celebs roaming the planet I always kinda had a warm spot in my heart for Courtenay Cox and David Arquette. Now maybe that stems from the fact that Courtenay went on from her Dancin’ in the Dark with Brucie days to being one of everyone’s Friends. And David? Well he’s a member of that cool Arquette family and who can forget his sister outshining Madonna in Desperately Seeking Susan (I see my ‘80’s references are a bit pervasive this fine morning). If you don’t live under a rock (and I’m sure even the Chilean miners who WERE living under rock for 70 days heard about this) then you know that Mr. and Mrs. Cox-Arquette are “legally separated”.

As is normally the case the media jumped all over this with hints of cheating and other horrors. David Arquette is a Howard Stern fan. Because of his celeb status he’s been on the show every chance possible. He’s become a bit of a friend of Howard’s I suppose. Earlier last week, a day or two after the split was made public David called in to Howard’s show to set the record straight. He sounded truly sad. He sounded honest. I’m not sure that “honest” has a sound but if it does that’s how David Arquette sounded on the air. He wasn’t his usual joking self. He made it clear more than once that he wanted his wife back. He understood what was wrong. He talked about the woman he slept with while he was separated from Courtenay and stated that it was not a relationship. If you listened to the whole phone call…if you didn’t take anything out of context or even read it as a transcript (it was important to the message to actually HEAR him talk) you couldn’t help but feel like the guy was just looking for one honest outlet for him to tell celeb stalkers what was going on and hope they’d just go the fuck away.

Alas that was not to be. It turned into an interesting exercise in media mash-ups. Some of the most offensive people that I heard were Billy Bush and Hoda Kotb and Kathie Lee Gifford. They took everything David said out of context and twisted his words and emotions and then added to that by somehow holding Howard Stern responsible for…well for being Howard Stern.

Sadly, had any of these “journalists” gotten this same scoop from David Arquette they would’ve exploited him and the scoop to the Nth degree. There would’ve been promos and teasers and they would’ve cut and edited it into something different entirely, they would’ve edited out the honesty.
Now I admit that I haven’t given much weight to these types of shows but they are mild entertainment. I don’t know any of these people personally. I certainly don’t know David Arquette or Courtenay Cox but after actually HEARING David on Howard Stern and then hearing what these so-called “journalists” think he said it’s rather shocking. They clearly didn’t hear the live piece on Howard. They may not have heard any of it but instead got transcripts of key pieces from their associate producers or “researchers”. What they “reported” and what I heard were about as similar as a banana is to a live chicken.

I would hate to claim to have been the fourth grade teacher of Billy Bush or Kathie Lee because I think it was somewhere around fourth grade where we learned to do book reports where we had to report accurately about a book we read. We learned to do simple expository explanations of facts. We learned how to do that exercise of standing in front of the class and explaining in detail how to make a peanut butter (I know, I know, no more peanuts in schools…don’t get me started) and jelly sandwich. Had I been Billy Bush’s or Kathie Lee’s fourth grade teacher and heard their retelling of what David Arquette said on Howard Stern I’d be saddened to find that my hard work of teaching these morons was in vain.

I’d love to start an anti-celeb movement. Stop buying People, US and OK magazines. When those tabloid shows come on TV, shut it off and play a game with the family. I’m not saying don’t read or don’t watch TV…I’m saying let’s stop pandering to people whose only purpose is to create a false sense of urgency over who someone had dinner with and where they ate.

Howard and David…I’m sure you’re not reading this but if, perchance you do…I appreciate the honesty. David, your effort to put an honest account out there only proved the statement that no good deed goes unpunished.

Billy Bush, Hoda, Kathie Lee and all you other people. I’m sorry you get to make so much money for pushing such shit out there to the public. You’re all a bunch of creeps.