Howard Stern responds to new backlash over his past N-word and blackface use: "It’s like, who is that guy. But that was my shtick, that’s what I did and I own it"

Deadline

Amid the racial reckoning over George Floyd's death, filmmaker Tariq Nasheed posted a clip of Stern's 1993 New Year's Eve pay-per-view special last week interspersed with his comments on The View last year denying he ever used the N-word. The clip got enough traction that Donald Trump Jr., who's been feuding with Stern, called the shock jock out. Over the past decade, Stern has evolved to the point that he stopped using offensive words like "retard" and "midget." This morning on his radio show, Stern addressed his past use of the N-word and blackface. "The sh*t I did was fu*king crazy,” Stern said, according to Deadline. “I’ll be the first to admit. I won’t go back and watch those old shows; it’s like, who is that guy. But that was my shtick, that’s what I did and I own it. I don’t think I got embraced by Nazi groups and hate groups. They seemed to think I was against them too. Everybody had a bone to pick with me. It was something in me, a drive you wouldn’t believe. As a young man, I wanted to succeed on the radio and I wanted to go fucking crazy. Emotionally it was costing me a lot. The FCC was after me, the right wing was after me, I had the Ku Klux Klan after me, threatening my life. All kinds of crazy stories. I could do 17 movies on my life, how crazy it was. I was fined millions of dollars by the federal government, for sex. Not for race, because if you talked about race, they never cared. Look, that was the show. I went into therapy and said, what is this? Do I always have to be the guy pulling my pants down? Can I find a way to do the show where I can be a lot happier? Over the years, I did change the show. A lot of people who did like that humor, where I was completely pulling my pants off, those people are pissed off at me now. They think I’m a sellout and I’m not doing a good show anymore. I got soft. I came to realize in therapy, if I’m going to be with my kids, and have a successful marriage, I can’t be insane completely 24 hours a day. I have to figure out a better way to communicate. So I evolved and changed."