On the day I left Boulder, Colorado, to move to New York, I bought a copy of Howard Stern’s just-released book, Private Parts, as a gesture toward learning about the customs of a strange new land. Anyone who paid attention to the ebb and tide of big media knew that Stern was the reigning “shock jock”of New York radio, that his “indecent” radio show had cost his corporate parents hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees payable to the FCC, and that “sophisticated” people were supposed to find him repugnant. (And, oh yes, Film Threat magazine had given a rave review to a Stern video called Butt Bongo Fiesta.) Along with Rush Limbaugh, Stern was the author who most offended Boulder’s excruciatingly correct political sensibilities.

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