Regular listeners to Howard Stern's show have probably heard him do this a dozen times. He takes audiobooks by celebrities, chops them up, and plays edited versions that sound a million different kinds of vulgar. (I heard the Stern-ized version of George Takei's book many years ago, which Takei himself found hilarious, but I didn't pay much attention to the other ones.) Dolly, however, does not find what was done with her audiobook hilarious at all.
Stern played a recording last week of Dolly Parton's voice making not just sexually vulgar, but racist statements and saying atrocious things about other celebrities. (They're really too gross for me to want to reprint them, but you can read them here.)
Understandably, Dolly was "shocked, hurt, and humiliated." Upon hearing it, she issued the following statement:
I have never been so shocked, hurt and humiliated in all my life. I cannot believe what Howard Stern has done to me. In a blue million years, I would never have such vulgar things come out of my mouth. They have done editing or some sort of trickery to make this horrible, horrible thing. Please accept my apology for them and certainly know I had nothing to do with this. If there was ever going to be a lawsuit, it's going to be over this. Just wanted you to know that I am completely devastated by this.
Poor Dolly. Howard, WTF, man. It's one thing to take lighthearted jabs at celebrities who record their own books, because that really is just kind of ripe for comedy. But manipulating someone's recording to make them sound like a bigot and like they're accusing their friends of pedophiliac rape is incredibly gross. (And I'm pre-emptively not taking "it's comedy" as a defense for this. Racism and child rape really just aren't especially hilarious, and if someone attributed this stuff to me, I'd be furious, too. But I think I'd prefer kicking him in the shins repeatedly to suing him, since at the level of richness of every party involved here, any amount of money is going to feel pretty arbitrary to all of them.)
Also, I admit that the phrase "blue million years" is so endearing that it might have influenced my siding with Dolly.
What do you think about Brooke Hogan posing for Playboy?
Subscribe to our RSS Feed