Stuttering Is No Laughing Matter

What’s so funny about being politically incorrect? I just don’t get it.

Howard Stern’s “Private Parts” autobiography, one of the most politically incorrect books ever written, has soared to No. 1 on many nonfiction bestseller lists. Yet the media haven’t fully explored the depth of Stern’s political incorrectness (“Not Just Another Pretty Celebrity,” Calendar, Oct. 10). Maybe it would help if we stripped away the label of political incorrectness to expose it for what it really is--rude behavior.

Take, for example, Stern’s ridicule of a member of his entourage. It particularly offends me as an advocate for people who stutter. Stern devotes an entire chapter of his book to “Stuttering John--Hero of the Stupid.” He clearly is a hero to Howard, if no one else.

For a number of years, Stern had tried to agitate celebrity guests by ambushing them with embarrassing questions. When a young student from New York University applied for a job as an intern, Stern quickly hired him sight unseen when he heard that the young man had a chronic stutter. Stern explained the connection in his book:

“A stutterer! Now we could really go after those pompous stars. We could ask them the most degrading, disgusting and tasteless questions and they’d be fluttering out of the crippled mouth of a stutterer.

These celebrities would have to listen to these questions--better yet, work to listen to these questions--and then they’d have to respond or run the risk of being accused of being insensitive to the handicapped. Thank God for political correctness!!”

Yet Stern’s own book proves his stated justification for hiring this young man to be flawed. I applaud Dr. Ruth, Marlo Thomas, Gloria Steinem, Justine Bateman, baseball legend Ted Williams, Mike Wallace and Walter Cronkite for their quick dismissal of John’s rude questions.

Stern hired a young man who stutters so that Stern and his crew could “goof on” (laugh at) his stutter.

On July 2, 1991, I debated Stern and his sidekick Robin Quivers on his program about their ridicule of stutterers. Stern quickly brought up the Warner Bros. stuttering cartoon character Porky Pig. Stern said, “Do you think that it was Porky’s cute tail that made him funny? It was his stuttering.”

So I gather that Stern had ripped off Porky Pig for his creation of “Stuttering John--Hero of the Stupid.” Having stuttered for 48 years of my life and met thousands of my fellow stutterers, I know that stuttering is not a laughing matter. Stern and his crew mimic stuttering in a cruel and malicious manner nearly every day on his radio program.

I tell my fellow stutterers that when people make fun of them, they mean to rob you of your dignity. Don’t let them do it.

Touchstone Films and MTV recently moved quickly to correct the possibility that their media products might have contributed to a tragic loss of life. The New York Times also recently reported on a New York subway system worker who went berserk because he could not take the taunting of his co-workers because of a moderate stutter. He killed a co-worker, wounded his foreman and killed himself.

I was not surprised that Stern avoided talking about this story on his program. It was big news in every New York City newspaper.

But the story was discussed on radio and TV by the accomplished actor James Earl Jones during his promotional tour of his excellent book “James Earl Jones: Voices and Silences.” To Jones, who freely admits to being a stutterer, it was symbolic of the tragedy of stuttering in this society.

For eight years of his childhood, ages 6 to 15, he became a virtual mute because he could not deal with the ridicule of his classmates because he stuttered.

To waste one’s childhood like that is a tragedy that continues today for too many children who stutter.

But to get back to my question, what’s so funny about being politically incorrect? Comedy historian Steve Allen in his book “Funny People” spoke of the origins of what makes us laugh. Allen spoke of a theory derived from Plato, “which states that the pleasure of laughter grows out of a sense of the misfortune of others and a sudden awareness of self-superiority in that we ourselves are not in the predicament observed.”

If people realized the pain and rage that many persons who stutter feel when being ridiculed, I doubt that any caring person would continue to admire this politically incorrect--and truly inhuman--behavior by Howard Stern or anyone else.