Private Parts (35 page)

Then she had to go right out and get pregnant again. Hey, poor Giff looks to me as if he's 177 years old, did he need this aggravation? Plus, he had to be afraid he couldn't pork her for like four months while she was pregnant. Hey, to a guy his age, four months can be a death sentence. So she was about to give birth and, frankly, I was surprised she wasn't filming the birth as a special. Now, it was time to name the kid. Again, I suggested Beelzebub on my show, but she wanted a cute name starting with a "C" to go with Cody. We offered Cucumberhead and Cokehead and Coolie but Kathie Lee picked Cassidy.

But as vile as Kathie Lee is, Regis is ten times more despicable. And he was the subject of one of our finest hours on the radio: the Danny Philbin Radiothon. It all started when we found an article in the
Enquirer.
There was a picture of a sad-looking guy in a wheelchair. I began to read the copy: "This legless student is the son of TV's Regis Philbin, ignored by his rich dad and living in a slum."

Regis is pulling in at least two mill a year, and he's basically ignoring his crippled son. I read on: "Millionaire talk show host Regis Philbin has a legless wheelchair-bound son who's desperately trying

to scrape by on a $300-a-month disability check, but Regis isn't lifting a finger to help him."

It seemed that Danny was one of the children from Regis's first marriage to a woman named Katherine. Regis had gotten out of that marriage with a lump-sum payment of $30,000. While he was sending his daughters from his present marriage all over the world, he was barely giving this poor kid anything. Occasionally, Danny would get a package of old shirts that Regis had gotten from his show's sponsors. Danny was trying to get through college, but he suffered from internal infections, kidney problems, bladder troubles, and liver disorders.

A light bulb went off in my head! We would have a radiothon for Regis's son and present the money to Regis on the air. We dispatched Gary out onto the street with a wireless microphone, a big tin can, and a sad picture of Danny. Meanwhile I read on:

Philbin personally declined to comment on how he treats his first family, but his attorney stated that Philbin denies he has failed to support his son and said the talk show host has complied with and far exceeded previous contractual undertakings regarding his son. Danny told an insider, "I want to love my father, but I don't even know him. He's just some man I see on television."

By now, Gary was outside. He had fastened the blown-up pictures onto a sandwich sign and he had a big bell. He rang it and screamed, "Why does Regis ignore his kid? Please help." In a short fifteen minutes, he had collected $230.76 and one subway token for poor Danny Philbin. Meanwhile, the phones were ringing off the hook with donations. Sam Kinison, with whom I was feuding at the time, called in with a $500 pledge. It broke the ice between us. Fred the Elephant Boy rang up with a $10 donation.

I tried to call the Green Room at Regis and Kathie Lee's show to ask their guests to contribute but I couldn't get through. A bus literally stopped traffic in the middle of Madison Avenue when the driver left to make a contribution. We read the tote board: $2,561.

"We've filled in three toes on our tote board for Regis's son, only seven more to go," I announced. I called an artificial limb company. The receptionist told me that a new pair of legs cost between $6,000 and $20,000. But a consultation was only $75. When it was time to

get off the air, we had collected $4,387.76.

Baba Booey collecting cash for Regis's son.

The next day Gary spoke with Danny Philbin. While he was very appreciative of our efforts, his lawyers had advised him not to take the money we had raised. He told us to thank our listeners for thinking of him but there were other people in the world who needed the

money more. He said it was Regis's responsibility and "that's a hell he has to live with every day." We sent the checks back and donated the cash to charity. But we got a great song out of the whole story. It was a parody of Creedence Clearwater Revival's "Proud Mary":

ROLL HIM INTO TRAFFIC

Left a TV job in Los Angeles

Headed to New York to work for ABC

Left my crippled son like a worn-out doorstop

I thought that pathetic anchor was through with me

That wheelchair leech is a liar

Embarrassed me in the
Enquirer

I'd like to roll him ... roll him ...

Roll him into traffic

Flipper foot lives in a pesthole

While my two "normal" daughters live
in
luxury

Is it my fault that this goldbrick defective

Didn't get his check from me until last week?

That wheelchair leech is a liar

Embarrassed me in the
Enquirer

I'd like to roll him ... roll him ...

Roll him into traffic

"It apparently is lost on Stern that he's fuller of himself than Rush Limbaugh squared." -- Ed Bark,
Dallas Morning News,
December 7, 1992

RUSH LIMBAUGH

I gave this fat pig his whole career. He was so lousy at radio that, at one point, he had to give it up and take some lame job. Then he heard me and suddenly he was back on the radio trying to do me. But he blows. Look, anytime you see a guy who weighs like three hundred pounds, you know we're not talking about emotional health. As soon as one of these fatties gets thin, all his problems come spilling out. Typically, they'll say: "I used the fat to build a wall around me. I was abused as a young child," though I suspect that Rush's excuse is that he just likes to eat. There's

always a reason for someone being that fat and it ain't glands, man. There's a whole wave of conservative disc jockeys in our country who don't have a true agenda unless it's to be dull and boring. And Rush is one of them. One of his big subjects is women. Women are

Feminazis, women are wrong to have abortions....Blah, blah, blah.

I love these fat pigs who sit back and pass judgment on women. They all say things like "These women who say they're raped are just lying to get abortions." Let me tell you what I hope happens to any guy who's got a big enough mouth to tell women that they can't have abortions. I hope they, collectively, while walking down the street, get pulled into an alley, sprawled over a garbage dumpster, and boned right up their fat fucking asses. Then they'll be crying, "We got raped in the ass!" Good for you, you pigs. Then they'll be the ones screaming that they want to have abortions.

YOKO OH NO LENNON

One of the "celebrities" I've ragged on for the longest time is Yoko Ono Lennon. I just thought she was some wacked-out so-called artist at first. She would do crazy things like go on "The Mike Douglas Show" with John and call up random people on the phone and tell them that she loved them! Some artist! Some spender, too! I read in the
Enquirer
that she even went out and invested a fortune in cows.

After John was killed, it seemed as if she was putting out anything she could get her hands on: "Wait, I think John once recorded something while he was on the pot here in the Dakota. Where's that tape? Sean, don't touch any tapes. I take tape, I buy cow. Two tape worth two cow. Sean, stay away from tape!"

And she sponsored a little fucking garden in Central Park, across from where they lived, and she called it Strawberry Fields! On the anniversary of John's death, Yoko is compelled to run down there to make an appearance with the same seven retards who show up every year. Yoko takes three of her biggest bodyguards, comes out of her building, runs across the street to Strawberry Fields, says "hello," and scurries right back inside her multimillion-dollar apartment. A few years ago, I sent Baba Booey out to interview her for my television show and he wound up getting fantastic tape that we aired of Yoko almost getting run over by a car trying to avoid him.

But the height of Yoko's arrogance came when she went to the

United Nations for a live celebration of John's fiftieth birthday. She figured out a way to get the broadcasters of the world to simultaneously broadcast her hollow tribute on more than a thousand radio stations to more than 130 countries. Luckily for Listeners-Who-Seek-the-Truth, all this happened during my airtime.

I was pissed off at Yoko even before this phony ceremony got under way because she was interrupting a hot Lesbian Dial-a-Date segment. I had a semi-boner when, all of a sudden, we had to cut live to the United Nations to hear this bogus tribute:

"People of earth," Yoko the Martian began, "how are you? How's life been for you? Today would have been the fiftieth birthday of my husband, John Lennon."

I couldn't control myself. "The good news is he doesn't have to sleep with you anymore," I said. I talked over the whole ceremony.

"I would like us to remember and celebrate his birthday as a day of love, as he was a man of love,..." she droned on.

I imitated her droning voice: "
I
didn't know he was John Lennon when I met him.
Yeah, right. She followed him around for months! HOMEWRECKER!" I yelled. "You STOLE John away from his real peace-loving wife Cynthia. You're a homewrecker, not a head of state! You're a rich foreign groupie, not the Pope!"

"Let's use the power of dreaming," Yoko continued.

"The power of dreaming? Okay, I dream that you would just shut your mouth," I hissed.

Yoko went on, making me vomit: "Let's dream of peace, birds flying in clear air, fish swimming in clear water, and -- "

"A stitch in time saves nine,"
I said in my best Yoko voice.

Yoko pretentiously went on . .. and on: "For a dream we dream alone is only a dream, but a dream we dream together..."

"Wasn't Cynthia Lennon dreaming that she could be together

with John? HER husband?" I yelled over her stupid droning voice.

Predictably, they started playing John singing "Imagine." This was too much for me.

"I don't have to listen to that! I've got a lesbian in the studio. Hey, lesbian, can I spank you during 'Imagine'?" I asked.

"We're supposed to be listening to John Lennon now," Robin, the cop, reprimanded me.

"I'm not listening 'cause Yoko's merchandising everything of John's. Coffee mugs, everything. Hey, Yoko,
imagine there's no royalties! It's easy if you try.
We'll just take 'em away from you. We'll see how much peace you're into.

"You think John Lennon, if he were alive, would put his name on mugs?" I was telling her off. I was the only one speaking
The Truth.
Then a moron listener called to complain that I ruined her John Lennon moment.

"How did I ruin your moment? You could have turned to another one of a thousand stations. I create four hours a day for you, you thankless bitch!"

She called me a "motherless fucker" and hung up the phone.

"I'm wise to the whole scam. I'm not getting suckered into this," I said. "Everybody else wants to kiss Yoko's ass? Go ahead, not me! Not this boy. NO WAY! Hey, Yoko, if you didn't rip off Cynthia's husband, you might be scrubbing men with a sponge for twenty bucks a pop, doing the Chinese basket trick!"

LINDA MCCARTNEY

Yoko isn't the only ex-Beatles wife we've exposed. A while back there was a bootleg tape circulating of Linda McCartney singing backup at one of Paul's concerts. There's another witch for you. Here's one of the world's greatest musicians, he married this photographer, now he can't pick up a guitar without this bim singing along and pounding on the piano. Apparently, this even pisses off their own crew, because, rumor has it, it was a technician who circulated this tape of Linda isolated from the rest of the group. She was so off-key it wasn't funny. We started playing it on the air and the next thing we knew, we got a cease-and-desist order from Linda's attorney. But the damage was done. I had unmasked another hypocrite.

"I'm actually a Howard Stern fan. I listen to him all the time. It's a voyeuristic show where you wouldn't listen to it in the car with someone else but 'Oh, great, I'm alone, I'll listen to Howard to see who he's trashing.' It was usually me." -- John Tesh

MICHAEL LANDON

Another show-biz hypocrite who pissed me off was Michael Landon. Did you see the homages paid to him when he died? All the news programs showed him walking down the road as an angel from his TV show "Highway to Heaven." When was this guy an angel? I'm sure at least two of his ex-wives thought he was going to hell. And he has this great image as a family man.
Family man?
This guy had nine children from three different wives. He was a guy in his fifties having children with his third wife. He wrote family shows, meanwhile his family was in total disarray. Three different wives. He was
a families
man. He made a bunch of sappy shows about the family he would have
liked
to have. He couldn't be an angel, so he acted as one.

PHIL DONAHUE AND MARLO THOMAS

It's funny, but most of the celebrities I really hate are talk-show hosts. Take Donahue for example. I read that book by Phil and Mario's butler, Desmond Atholl. Phil had a wife and kids and did

what every other Hollywood guy does. He got himself
the
Hollywood wife. The trophy wife. But according to Atholl's book, she turned out to be a fucking shrew.

This is some woman, this Mario. All wrapped up in her little feminist causes. But when you think about it, what has she done for women? This yenta's always busy with the specials and the books about children's this and children's that. First of all, it's easy to write a children's book. I have to make up stories every night for my kids. Last night I made up one right on the spot for my daughters:
Once upon a time there was a daddy who ripped out a cat's uterus. Then he ripped off its claws. Then he chopped off its head. And it lived happily ever after.
The moral of the story is: Life sucks, shitty things happen to you along the way, but still you go on. Boom! You got a book. Big deal!