Charlotte morning-show hosts react to Howard Stern blasting them as ‘idiots’ on the air
Although they were greatly overshadowed by a headline-making, two-hour-and-24-minute interview with Hillary Clinton, the co-hosts of WCCB Charlotte’s morning show — “Rising” — got a brief shout-out from Howard Stern on Wednesday morning’s broadcast of his SiriusXM Satellite Radio show.
Actually, a better way to put it: WCCB’s “Rising” co-hosts Derek James and Laresa Thompson briefly got shouted at, over the airwaves, with Stern using his megaphone to call James as “a moron” and stopping juuuust short of using an offensive word to refer to Thompson.
All because he apparently felt they had mocked his looks on their own show a day earlier. Which Thompson says she wasn’t at all trying to do, while James says ... well, he was, kind of. But now he takes it back. Part of it, at least.
*Deep breath*
Yeah, this is going to take some explaining.
OK, so here’s how it all unfolded:
On Monday morning, Stern — who was a judge on NBC’s summer-reality hit “America’s Got Talent” from 2012-2015, exiting as Simon Cowell replaced him on the panel — lambasted Cowell while weighing in on NBC’s recent, controversial decision to cut ties with two female judges, Gabrielle Union and Julianne Hough.
(Union, an African-American actress who spent just one season with the show, has alleged that she was fired after complaining about perceived racism and other on-set issues. NBC has said it is investigating her claims.)
“(Cowell) has set it up that the men stay, no matter how old they are, no matter how fat they are, no matter how ugly they are, no matter how talentless they are,” Stern ranted on his show Monday. “But what he (Cowell) manages to do on all his shows is, he constantly replaces the hot chicks with hotter chicks and younger chicks.”
On Tuesday morning, as the kicker to his “Hot in Hollywood” segment, Derek James — a 15-year veteran of WCCB — referred to Stern’s comments, setting them up like so: “That story of Gabrielle Union and Julianne Hough’s firing from ‘America’s Got Talent,’ as expected, (is) getting even crazier. Now former judge Howard Stern (is) weighing in and calling out Simon Cowell. On Monday’s episode of ‘The Howard Stern Radio Show,’ Stern accused Howell of having orchestrated Union’s firing. Stern said — and I’m quoting now — ” and then James read that quote you from the previous paragraph, verbatim.
James briefly inserted some editorializing about the fired judges: “Huge ‘AGT’ fan. ... (I’ve) watched the show for years. Julianne should have gone, ’cause she was not a good judge. ... Julianne was a dud. She didn’t add anything to the show. Gabrielle should have stayed.”
With the clock running out on the segment, co-host Laresa Thompson added: “I would like to hear more,” she says, “about what Mr. Stern — why was he let go? Was he ugly? Was he fa —” she interrupts herself before fully committing to the word fat, continuing: “— like, what are those things that are there that —”
This was followed by some cross-talk, as James interrupted, spinning off of her questions. “I was gonna say all of the above,” he said, laughing. “He (Stern) kind of checks all those boxes.” Thompson can be heard underneath his voice saying, “Why is he not there anymore?” They then moved on. (See the full clip here.)
On Wednesday morning, Stern revived the conversation about Cowell, rehashing his feelings about the “AGT” honcho before veering off to lay into the “Rising” co-hosts (though he never refers to WCCB, he mentions “The CW” — WCCB is a CW affiliate — and “Charlotte — what is that, North Carolina?”).
“So here’s how they report me weighing in on the Gabrielle Union situation,” Stern said. “It’s just completely wrong. It’s stupid. And somehow (they) are painting me to be sexist, ’cause they’re idiots.”
He then played the audio of James reading back Stern’s original quote, and — after referring to her as “the dopey woman sitting on the couch” — the audio of Thompson and James’ banter.
Stern clearly had gotten fixated on the latter.
“I’m defending the women and talking about Simon Cowell,” he ranted. “She — I don’t know what in her convoluted mind ”
“She just focuses on you,” chimed Robin Quivers, Stern’s sidekick.
“On me. And she goes, ‘I would like to know’ —” Stern broke into a severely exaggerated impression of Thompson’s voice, briefly interrupting himself: “First of all, you know, you’re a broadcaster, learn how to speak. ‘I would like to know, is he fat, i (sic) he ugly, i — ? ... Why wa (sic) he let go? That has nothing to do with the story. She’s reta —”
Stern caught himself before finishing that particular adjective. He went on to say she had “no comprehension of what’s going on in this story.”
Before he was through, Stern also responded to James’ “he kind of checks all those boxes” quip.
“He’s all, ‘He’s ugly, he’s stupid, he’s fat,’ ” Stern whined.
Another “Stern Show” regular, Shuli Egar, said, “Who the (expletive) is that guy?”
“He’s a moron who’s working on The CW!” Stern shouted.
“He doesn’t understand what he just read,” Quivers said.
Added Stern: “Whenever they give anchorpeople ad-lib time, they screw it up. ‘He ugly, he fat.’ Alright, I get ugly. I’m not fat.”
On Wednesday afternoon, James — who had caught wind of the “Stern Show” segment on social media but hadn’t actually heard it before being contacted by the Observer — chuckled multiple times as a recording of it was played for him over the phone.
“But I do understand what I read,” James said, with a laugh, after hearing the whole exchange.
“It’s funny that they’re critiquing for comprehension, because ... we made it very clear that he (Stern) was sticking up for both Gabrielle and Julianne in the situation, and was criticizing Simon,” he continued. “I think he just got a little too narrowly focused on that last part of the conversation, and not enough on the rest of it.”
Incidentally, Thompson says she wasn’t taking a shot at Stern, but rather posing innocent questions out of genuine curiosity.
“The reason why I asked why he wasn’t on the show anymore is I wanted to know: Did he have the same toxic experience? ... My question wasn’t to take it away from these two women; my question was to say, ‘Hey, Howard, did you have the same experience too?’ ... Who else has experienced this and isn’t saying anything?”
To that end, she lamented the fact that the discussion they were able to have about the “AGT” controversy on their “Rising” show was so severely abbreviated.
“Unfortunately, you’ve only got a minute when you’re on TV,” Thompson said. “You can’t spend 30 minutes on a great topic.”
If she could have, she said she would have devoted more time defending Stern and his fearlessness.
“The thing that I love about Howard Stern is a lot of times he says the things that most people are thinking and they’re afraid to say. ... Folks like Howard Stern taking a stand is great. I encourage more people to do more. Don’t just say something, do something. What’s something else you can take the action on? What are some things that you can do to work with women of color, or women in general, or minorities? What is it that you can do to help? And maybe not use the name-calling so much.”
(Indeed, while Thompson admitted to being “super-pumped” about getting recognized by Stern, and said she wasn’t offended by his mocking of the way she talks — “I’m super-proud of my Southern heritage” — she did bristle at his utterance of the R-word. “I have a sister that is mentally challenged,” Thompson said. “Does that word necessarily bother me? No. He wasn’t directing that towards my sister, so OK, it’s all good. But could he have used a better choice of words? Of course.”)
James, meanwhile, said being called names “doesn’t bother me at all.” He said he knows Stern just did it to get laughs, and that despite the laughs being at his own show’s expense — and despite the laughs being about things taken out of context — it was fun to be acknowledged by a star as big as Stern.
“When you’re doing a show at a local level, you’re never really thinking, like, ‘Oh, this stuff comes back to them, they hear it or see it.’
“Anyway, clearly I have to do a better job of kissing Howard Stern’s butt,” James joked. “But then again, he probably wouldn’t use that. It wouldn’t be nearly as interesting.”
The one thing James does regret about the segment they did on “Rising” on Tuesday?
“I will always admit when I’m wrong, and I was wrong: He is not fat,” James said, laughing. “I shouldn’t have said, ‘He checks all the boxes.’ ’Cause he checks some, but not all of the boxes.”
Théoden Janes: 704-358-5897, @theodenjanes
This story was originally published December 4, 2019 at 10:55 PM with the headline "Charlotte morning-show hosts react to Howard Stern blasting them as ‘idiots’ on the air."
