Howie Stern

The bad-boy of radio on Letterman in 1984. Here's Howard before he adopted his stylist and grew his hair into an absurd mane to obscure his giant schnoz. It's hard to take him seriously with a minor Jew-fro, ill-fitting leather pants and brown boots. But then I'm convinced the reason I've always liked his show had something to do with an inability to take him seriously.

Stern has always been a nice Jewish boy playing it tough. Unlike Imus, who was a cokehead shit-tard playing mean. It can all be summed up in the Vonnegut quote I posted a couple of weeks back: "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be."

My only corollary: It helps if people know you're pretending.