Stern: Bush Behind Effort to 'Fire' Him

Radio shock jock Howard Stern, suspended from his program by mega-network Clear Channel, says he fears the recent action is really a firing, not a time out.

And he's blaming President Bush for it.

"I might be taken off all the stations very soon, and my last words to you are 'G.W.B.'," Stern railed to his listeners, according to a report by John Mainelli of the New York Post.

"Get him out of office. I'm tellin' you, man, he's in dangerous territory [with] a religious agenda and you gotta vote him out. Anyone but Bush," Stern complained.

Stern had his program yanked from six Clear Channel stations until, company execs say, "we are assured that his show will conform to acceptable standards of responsible broadcasting." But Stern says he believes his hiatus will become permanent.

Stern played a segment of Clear Channel's CEO testifying before a congressional indecency hearing on Thursday, then declared, "It doesn't sound like I'm going to be asked back."

Meanwhile John Hogan fired Florida's "Bubba the Love Sponge" on the eve of those hearings, declaring, "The Bubbas of the world and the Howard Sterns of the world are the exception rather than the rule, and they will no longer have a platform on our stations."

He added he was "ashamed" of both programs.

Stern complained he couldn't reach anyone at Clear Channel to find out the status of his employment.

"I don't even know what's going on [with Clear Channel]. They haven't called us. We've put in a couple of calls to them," he said.

Stern had dinner Thursday night with Viacom president Mel Karmazin, who also faced a tough hearing before lawmakers earlier this month over the Janet Jackson bare-breasted Super Bowl incident, the Post reported.

"Mel said, 'I pay a lot less money to you [than to the NFL] and I make way more,'" Stern says Karmazin told him.

Stern, once heard on 70 stations in the U.S. and Canada, was down to 40 before losing the Clear Channel six.

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