Bruce Bawer has written the best tribute to Howard Stern that I can remember reading. It's titled "Howard Stern, Man's Best Friend -- A lifelong listener speaks of the joy Stern has brought to his life." Because I'm a longtime fan of Howard Stern, almost all of it rang very true with me.

Here's an excerpt:

The years went by and brought many changes for me, but Howard -- along with Quivers and his gifted sidekick Fred Norris -- remained a constant. He saw me through several apartments and into and out of a long-term relationship. After he was fired by NBC in 1985 and became the morning man at WXRK, I got into the habit of setting my alarm for 6 a.m., when his program began. It helped me ease my way into the day.

Writing was, and is, my life -- writing, mostly, about things I take very seriously. Listening to Howard every morning helped me keep a sense of humor about it all -- a sense of the ridiculous, a sense of balance. From 1982 to 1998, when I moved to Europe, I had his show on, all four to five hours of it, almost every single weekday. In my entire life, I realized one day, there's nobody whose voice I've listened to more. And nobody who's given me more laughs.

I couldn't agree more, and so do many people. As I pointed out in an older post, Howard Stern helped keep the economy going, and Bruce Bawer's piece has inspired me to regurgitate my rant:

My bedroom radio had a built-in timer, which I set to wake me up to Howard Stern each morning when his show started. I soon learned that I was not the only one to do this, because just before starting the program, he'd always play some sort of musical prelude which seemed perfectly appropriate to that sleepy, REM-dream-state I'd be in. Sometimes he'd even play this surreal, dreamy, 1960s sci-fi type, trance music -- the stuff which typified many a movie "flashback" (or "memory regression") segment. This was great -- and it didn't matter whether I slept through it or incorporated it into my dreams.

Eventually, I would wake up, and almost always in a great mood.

A great mood.

Was I alone in this?

Far from it. I hadn't noticed it before, but I started to notice that many of the delivery guys -- you know, ordinary working-class men who had to get up way early in the morning and perform the sort of drudgery which the economy (and the country) needs to function -- would be listening to Howard Stern!

I am a morning runner, and I can't tell you how many times I would hear bits of Howard Stern coming from the Pepsi delivery trucks, the Budweiser delivery trucks, construction sites.

These guys looked as if listening to Howard made their jobs easier! Easier to get to work, and easier to work when you get there! Running with a radio headset on, I'd sometimes hear an "echo" -- and I'd loosen the headphone, and there'd be some worker or group of workers, usually smiling, getting through the hardest part of the day.

Can this be measured in dollars? It might be difficult, and it might require some serious studies by economists, but I have long argued that Howard Stern is a boon to the national economy, and I think I am right.

The more I listened, the more I came to love that show. I found that many white collar guys listened to him too, and then the more I asked around, the more I heard that women also listened to Howard Stern!

Imagine that! Women listening to this misfit misogynist trash talk guy! What continues to amazes me is that the women who like Howard Stern are a cut above; they tend to be smarter, more cynical (the healthy kind), and above all they have enough of a sense of humor to appreciate that Howard is intelligent and poking fun at all human foibles (not the least of which are his own). Even his braggadocio is deliberately ridiculous. His lies about serving in Vietnam, his endless declarations that he is the greatest "KING OF ALL RADIO," the nonsense about his being "half Jewish and half Italian" -- these are the kind of things which the clueless might take literally. And that fact alone -- that the clueless take him seriously -- is a very important part of the humor.

It's tough to explain this to anyone who is not a regular listener. Yet these are the people who most hate him.

Hmmm... Maybe that looks condescending. (Saying people "don't get" something might be seen as implying they're stupid or have no sense of humor, and it's one of the hazards of blogging -- especially irritating if you don't like explaining yourself on demand.) So... maybe some of them do get it but just don't like it. Well, I never said Howard Stern is for everyone, nor did Bruce Bawer.

Anyway, whether you like Howard or not, the whole thing is well worth reading.