“It wasn’t the honesty so much, it was the sense of camaraderie,” Stern said of that relationship. “This is why I felt he won the presidency. The communication is one of … let’s call him a regular guy. As successful or rich as he is, or privileged from having a wealthy family, he understood how to talk like a guy. He would call in and give his opinions, and yes, he was being honest, but look what he was being honest about.”<doc-sep>More important, the book implicitly raises thorny questions about responsibility, agency and forgiveness, especially in the context of #MeToo and its fraught narratives of personal downfall and potential redemption. This is a man who did incalculable damage during his barbarian days — are we ready to forgive him? Is this change of heart legitimate? Today’s cultural landscape, bracingly, often calls upon each of us to practice a kind of moral calculus in affairs of public reputation. These matters are ineluctably complex and subjective, and in this, at least, “Howard Stern Comes Again” is perfectly of its time.<doc-sep>“Donald asked me to come speak on his behalf at the convention, and I had to be honest with him, and it was not comfortable,” says Stern. “I said, ‘Donald, that’s not where my heart lies.’ . . . I wanted Hillary Clinton to win. . . . Would she have now been president had she done my show? I’m not saying that, but I am saying the attitude of Joe Biden if he becomes a nominee or Mayor Pete or whoever it is, they better keep in mind. Trump speaks like a dude. I’m talking about his manner of speech, not the intellectual capacity, not the desire to be president, not the policy, but he talks in clips where people understand what he’s saying. Whether you agree with him or not. And it’s a good lesson for Hillary, and this is what I try to point out in the book.”<doc-sep>The following is an excerpt from Howard Stern Comes Again, the first book in over two decades from Howard Stern. In this selection, Stern reveals how close Hillary Clinton was to appearing on his radio show in the 2016 election, and why it didn’t happen. Read on below. Howard Stern Comes Again publishes Tuesday and is available for pre-order. — I don’t think I’ve ever tried harder to get a guest than I did with Hillary Clinton in the run-up to the 2016 election. As you know by now from reading this book, Donald Trump and I go way back, and had I endorsed him for president, publicly hitched myself to his candidacy and gone all in, who knows what might have come from it. Instead of writing this book, I might have been sitting on the Supreme Court. Chief Justice Stern. Imagine me in my custom John Varvatos robe, banging my gavel and picking the pubic hairs out of Clarence Thomas’s Coke can. Maybe I’d be chairman of the FCC, in charge of the government branch that tried to put me out of business. Think of the cosmic irony in that. Perhaps a cushy ambassadorship someplace warm, or at the very least I might have wrangled an invitation to Camp David. But I’m no sellout. I have been a fan of Hillary for nearly as long as I’ve known Donald. This woman has dedicated her life to public service, and that’s what I look for in a candidate. She was a first lady, senator, secretary of state. Her entire life has been in the service of our country. People would say to me, “You’re just voting for her because she’s the lesser of two evils.” I’d say, “No, I wanted her as president before I wanted Barack Obama.” I love Barack Obama, but I was a Hillary Clinton supporter going all the way back to 2008. I think she would have been a great president. I saw long before anyone else that it wasn’t going to be easy for her to beat Donald. I didn’t see her connecting. My audience spans the entire country, including the swing states. I know these people. They’ve been listening to me my entire career. I could tell that they were just not feeling Hillary and that they were really embracing Donald. As I said in this book’s introduction, I consider Donald Trump one of the best radio guests ever. He just knows how to connect with an audience. Hillary does not. I was talking to my agent, Don Buchwald, about this. I said, “If Hillary did the show, my listeners might appreciate her commitment to public service and her decency and humanity.” Don immediately became obsessed with this idea. We both did. We wanted to do whatever we could to make it happen. This wasn’t the first time we set our sights on a Moby Dick–type interview subject. In the early nineties, we tried to arrange an interview with Michael Jackson. He was looking to rehabilitate his image after the child molestation allegations, and his team reached out to us. They had the idea of me organizing some kind of rally in his honor in New York. I thought that was stupid and had my own idea of doing a TV sit-down with him at halftime during the Super Bowl. Don and I got as far as meeting Michael at his manager’s Central Park apartment. Michael walked in dressed in his full military getup and the tape on his nose. We talked for about ten minutes. I couldn’t stop staring at all the makeup on his face, which was practically dripping off. He was like the Elephant Man. After the meeting, we never heard from him again. I knew I probably shouldn’t get my hopes up about Hillary. I couldn’t help it. I really believed that by coming on my show she would win over the type of voters she so desperately needed. I also thought my time on AGT might have made me more palatable in her eyes. I had been so astonished and humbled by how the American public had come to embrace me, thanks to that show. Often before we taped an episode, I would go out in front of the crowd and warm them up. I would tell the story of how in 1985 the chairman of NBC, Grant Tinker, had fired me from my radio show on WNBC and then said over his dead body would I ever be allowed back at the network. “Well,” I’d tell the crowd, “now Grant Tinker is dead, and guess what? Here I am at NBC.” They would laugh and applaud, and it felt like a victory lap—like Rocky running up the steps in Philadelphia. Sure, a less fit and muscular Rocky. I punch my own meat but not in a fridge. Still, I was on top of my game. Even if Hillary wasn’t a regular viewer of the show, maybe word would get back to her that it might be time to reconsider her opinion of me. Thinking about the Michael Jackson Super Bowl idea and AGT, Don and I wondered if TV was the answer. Maybe Hillary would be more willing to do an interview on camera than on the radio. As fervently as I’ve championed the radio format throughout my career, I know there are still plenty of people who see TV as more desirable. There were a few big TV networks that had been after me to host an interview show. It wouldn’t be a regular thing, just a few specials. SiriusXM was cool with it, since it didn’t conflict with my radio show. But I’m very loyal to Sirius, and I wouldn’t consider doing one of these TV specials unless it was for a really big guest. Howard-Stern Credit: Simon + Schuster The head of one of these networks was a huge financial backer of Hillary. Don went to him and said, “You get Hillary, and we’ll get equal time with Trump. Then you’ll get two specials.” It would’ve been easy to get Trump for an interview.<doc-sep>
“It's been over twenty years since my last book, and I vowed I would never do this again.” So begins “Howard Stern Comes Again” (Simon & Schuster, 560 pp., $35), the talk show host’s first literary effort in 24 years, actually. It goes on sale today. In the introduction, Stern, 65, explains that lifelong OCD and the pressures of other gigs — the Sirius radio program, his former role as host of “America's Got Talent” — had ruled out another book. Then, in the spring of 2017, he writes, “Simon & Schuster handed me a finished copy. Tricky bastards.” The publisher's idea was this: dozens of interviews from “The Howard Stern Show" over the years, each with a Stern-written preamble. Stern didn't like the interviews S & S had selected, so he chose his own — 39 of them, most from Sirius, which he joined in 2006, and a handful from the old terrestrial radio days. Some interviews with Donald Trump — there were dozens over the decades — are included as part of a recurring segment called “And Now a Word from Our President.” Other interview subjects include Madonna (2015), Harvey Weinstein (2014), Joan Rivers (2014), Jay-Z (2010), Billy Joel (2014) and David Letterman (2017). One revelation will surprise longtime fans: Stern writes that he had a cancer scare in 2017, although subsequent surgery revealed that he had a benign cyst on one of his kidneys. I spoke recently with Stern about the book, that colorful past and the immediate future. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity. Other than the health scare, is there anything in these pages that will surprise fans? I didn't think of sitting down and shocking readers with revelation after revelation. It was more about psychotherapy, which was the hardest part for me — to come up with a better and more balanced life. I was falling apart on the inside [in the late '90s]. This was where I could say that I think psychotherapy works and that we lose sight of that, especially with the male audiences that sometimes think my opening up is ridiculous, or that therapy is all nonsense or a racket. I think change is possible. Sign up for Newsday's Entertainment newsletter Get the latest on celebs, TV and more. By clicking Sign up, you agree to our privacy policy. Nothing in your life is particularly secret, so why keep the health scare from fans until now? There's this whole internet culture [where you say], “Hey, my nose is running,” and the next thing they're doing is telling you stories about a friend's nose which was also running and how he ended up dead two weeks later. I'm a bit of a hypochondriac and worrier, so the real reason is that I didn't want to hear from anybody who had a similar operation. I [thought] I had cancer. It was 95 percent [certain]. I was in shock. One of the more interesting reveals is the interview that never happened — Hillary Clinton — and how aggressively you pursued her. I never pursued a guest [until her]. I really felt I could have made a difference with Hillary. As I explain in the book, I think there's a simple lesson in life — not to tighten up to the point where you close yourself off. She needed to appeal to a segment of my audience, a male part of my audience, that just [expletive] couldn't stand her. I don't know what it was, but as was pointed out [in a New York Times profile], I am able to present people in such a way on the radio where you strip away whatever it was that bugged people about them and get to hear the [real] person. You argue that she made a mistake by not coming on. Well, look at how the election turned out. It came down to a few thousand votes in a few key states. I could have made a difference. I'm not implying I could have changed the election, but I could have made a dent. It may have had an impact. [Not getting the interview] was a great disappointment to me. How far did negotiations get with her? There were a whole bunch of conversations [with handlers], but I think she thought she had [the election] locked up. But you can't ever think you have anything locked up. The other thing is, Donald Trump is good at talking like a dude.