Roger Ebert -- Stern belongs on radio just as much as Rush

[CatWoman]

BY ROGER EBERT

Like millions of Americans, I listen to Howard Stern on the radio in the mornings. I think he is smart, quick and funny. Sometimes he is ''offensive,'' but to be quite frank, I am not ''offended,'' because what he says falls within the realm of words and subjects that, as an adult, I have long been familiar with even without the tutelage of Stern.

Unlike millions of Americans, I do not listen to Rush Limbaugh on the radio. One reason for that is that I am usually at the movies when he's on the air -- an alternative I urge on his listeners. Limbaugh does offend me when I monitor him, because he has cheapened political discourse in this country with his canned slogans and cheap shots. Once you call a feminist a ''feminazi,'' what else is there to say about feminism?

http://www.suntimes.com/output/otherviews/cst-edt-ebert16.html

[Love Bug]

1. Well, two thumbs up!!

[Melodybe]

2. Wow, I dislike Ebert a whole lot less after this

Funny, how being a democrat these days can make you so much more likable.

[On the Road]

3. I Like This Part:

"It is a belief of mine about the movies, that what makes them good or bad isn't what they're about, but how they're about them. The point is not the subject but the form and purpose of its expression. A listener to Stern will find that he expresses humanistic values, that he opposes hypocrisy, that he talks honestly about what a great many Americans do indeed think and say and do. A Limbaugh listener, on the other hand, might not have guessed from campaigns to throw the book at drug addicts that he was addicted to drugs and required an employee to buy them on the street.

But listen carefully. I support Limbaugh's right to be on the radio. I feel it is fully equal to Stern's. I find it strange that so many Americans describe themselves as patriotic when their values are anti-democratic and totalitarian."

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Bush is finding out a lot ahout this country the hard way -- by going too far and receiving serious blowback. He doesn't realize the number of people who are not like him. If nothing else does it, Stern will take him down. He's worth a million votes easily, and that's all it will take.

[quispquake]

4. Great article!

I've always respected Ebert more than any other reviewer (hey, he wrote "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls" possibly the coolest movie ever!), and it's good to see him on the right side of this battle...