Howard Stern guest starred on The View this past Thursday to promote his new book. Co-Host Sunny Hostin took to questioning the TV personality on his past, claiming that Stern had a history of using racist language on his radio show. “I found your show so offensive,” said Hostin. “You used the N-word a lot.”
Stern seemed shocked, and immediately denied the accusation. “We had a guy on from the Ku Klux Klan who very freely used the N-word, and my belief was, ‘Hey, say it out in the open.’ I didn’t use the N-word, let’s be very clear.” Continuing his explanation as to why he allowed the word to be used he said, “I don’t like people who live under a rock. I said to the guy, ‘Let me hear what you’re saying and let’s confront it and let’s talk about it.’”
Despite Hostin's protest to his show, she admitted that his new book - a collection of interviews he’s done over the years - changed her opinion about him. “You’re a very different person today and I loved your book. I believe people evolve,” she told Stern. “I’m not going to say the show isn’t crazy and wild,” explained Stern. “But we’ve also opened it up to some new ideas where people, some really fantastic people, are coming in and feel safe enough to be interviewed and get into some real conversation” he added.
Though Stern fans are well-known to be obsessive tapers of his radio program, online archives don’t go back far enough to cover the time period that Hostin describes.
However, in a 1994 home video special called “Howard Stern’s New Year’s Rotten Eve 1994,” Stern used the word repeatedly in a sketch ridiculing the blackface controversy that Goldberg and her, then-boyfriend Ted Danson, became involved in the previous year.
Stern wore blackface to portray Danson, and used the uncensored n-word six times in less than two minutes, including as the punchline to the joke “What does you call a black rocket scientist?”
You can check out the full video - which is extremely offensive and NSFW - here.