Why Not Just Pull the Plug on Inhumanity?

They pulled the plug on the ugliest man in television last week. Too bad for Howard Stern--although he’ll probably be back, given his popularity.

I’d seen his TV show a couple of times and, from what I observed, it’s no great loss that it’s going off the air. (For those of you who are big fans, his radio show continues to flourish like a virus unchecked.)

I don’t mind that Stern is crude or iconoclastic.

What I mind is that he’s cruel.

The night I watched his TV show, Stern hosted “The Hooker’s Price Is Right,” a segment during which contestants pulled from a studio audience of rowdy young men were asked to estimate the price of the prostitute standing before them. I’m sure the hookers showed up voluntarily, but the spectacle was beyond demeaning.

None of the women seemed to have a clue. One, a hardened, hostile blond, seemed downright confused. She appeared oblivious to the fact that she was the butt of a hugely funny joke. So she stood and stared. The audience hooted. Her dazed look just broke my heart.

Howard Stern can be very funny. This was not funny. This was sadistic.

But they don’t cancel television shows for sadism. The world doesn’t seem to work that way. Stern’s producers claimed they couldn’t sell enough advertising.

After all, who really cares if a sleazy hooker is made to look like a fool?

I don’t know where we draw the line between mere tastelessness and outrageous exploitation or whether it’s even worth it to try. These issues are usually “I know it when I see it” propositions. The tension between free speech and responsible speech is not easily resolved.

One thing I do know is that disrespect breeds disrespect. Consider the case of rapper Ice-T and the police.

It’s hard to feel unadulterated support for the violent images in “Cop Killer,” whether they are sung “in character” or not. And yet, when I recall the racist, homophobic, sexist electronic mail that was transmitted on the computers of some LAPD squad cars and made public after the Rodney King case broke, it’s hard for me to summon unmitigated sympathy with police complaints about Ice-T’s lyrics.

(I wish the fine, upstanding citizens who so virulently object to that song would take on the sexual exploitation of women with such fervor. I bet women’s lives have been far more adversely affected by what passes for entertainment today than police have been by any tasteless fantasy revenge song.)

Mostly, issues of taste should be up to the citizenry, voting with the remote control or the wallet: Don’t like it? Don’t watch it. Don’t like the lyrics? Don’t buy the record. And in between, educate, educate, educate. Raise children to respect themselves and others. That is the only chance we stand of reducing the demand for exploitative entertainment, reducing the audience for songs that advocate violence against police or for reducing the number of bigoted officers.

A small example: As a child, I was not allowed to watch “I Love Lucy” because Lucy always lied to her husband. My mother felt this set a terribly negative example. Her standards seem positively quaint when you compare the relatively innocuous antics of Lucy to what we get on television now. But I respect my mother for her convictions and for what she taught us. I don’t lie to my husband, either.

Stern personifies disrespect, which is not always a bad thing. Trashing Arsenio Hall is a virtual pastime in some circles. But how many people do it when they are guests on “The Tonight Show,” as Stern did recently?

This is his shock value, this is what makes him so funny. He picks on big guys who richly deserve to be poked. But he doesn’t seem to “get” why people take offense at his other choice of targets.

“Most of the media has a great distaste for me,” he said last week at a press conference. “I’ve never understood why.”

It’s because he’s funny only half the time. The other half--when he mocks people because they are disabled or homeless (and this is a pillar of his schtick)--he’s just plain mean. His 5 million radio listeners are getting more than a catharsis out of his antics. They’re learning that cruelty is funny.

They’re “learning” that hookers are low-lifes who deserve to be ridiculed, that the only thing gay men think about is anal sex, that a woman’s breast size is critical information.

There’s no humanity in that.

There’s an audience for it, unfortunately, but no humanity.