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A Prayer for Howard and Chelsea

HowardStern.jpgOccasionally here at Plugged In, we’ll take some heat for being too hard on entertainers and pop culture. And I think I understand why: It’s because we spend a lot of time looking at and thinking about the influential folks in our society whose ideas, words and worldview contradict the values and convictions we hold to as Christians. Sometimes, I suspect, the cultural analysis we’d describe as “critical thinking” might come off as just plain critical. Or even cranky.

It’s especially easy, I think, to drop the hammer on the individuals whose influence is the most obviously problematic and devoid of much that could be described as praiseworthy or redemptive. Like, say, gangsta rappers. Or those guys who make torture porn films. Or comedians who not only cross the line, but who seem to try to erase it.

Speaking of the latter, two people at the top of that list are shock jock Howard Stern (who helms his Sirius satellite radio empire) and E! late-night talk show hostess Chelsea Handler. Both delight in taking vulgar, meanspirited and demeaning jabs at people. And both are so good at it, in fact, that it’s easy—very easy—to lose sight of the fact that they’re still deeply broken human beings.

But in the last few months, in-depth profile articles on both of them have reminded me that they didn’t get to where they are today accidentally. They didn’t start off quite so foul. Both Stern and Handler were hurt in their childhoods, and that pain seems to have contributed to the people they eventually became.

In the March 21 issue of Rolling Stone, for instance, Stern reflected on his dysfunctional family relationships while growing up:

You see, my father was very emotionally cut off from me. He worked long hours, got home about 7:00 and left early in the morning. I don't remember my father in my entire childhood saying, 'How are you feeling?' or 'How are you doing?' My father had no interest. I had some really interesting experiences as a kid growing up in an all-black neighborhood, and no one thought to ask me how I was handling it. It didn't matter what I thought, even emotionally. My mother and I had many conversations, but most of them were about her, her upbringing, her development and how I could please her. And my sister is great, but we were never emotionally close. So I think a lot of my inability to get close with people is based on all of that. I was always an outsider. 

Handler’s story, it turns out, is broadly similar. In the Sept. 16, 2010, issue of Rolling Stone, she talked about how tragedy and loss influenced the desperate court jester role she played in her family:

After [my brother's fatal hiking accident], I was always trying to get attention, because all of a sudden the attention was completely on the death of my brother, and nobody really paid attention to me, so it totally turned into me trying to get attention. And I'd do it in f---ed-up ways, like at school lying and saying I was going to be in a movie with Goldie Hawn, weird stuff like that. … I just wanted to be known. I wanted to be famous. It's really juvenile, yeah, but I wanted people to know who I was and that I was special.

I think these two stories remind me of several important things.

First, these influential entertainers’ penchant for nasty comedy as adults—and believe me, they both excel at no-holds-barred raunchiness—seems to be a direct result of what they experienced earlier in life. How sad their stories are. Now, that in no way lets them off the hook for their material today. But it does help me understand how they got to where they are today.

Second, both Stern and Handler’s stories reveal people who see themselves in some significant way as outsiders. And maybe, it seems, they’ve labored their entire lives to make up for that shame-inducing deficit.

Third, despite their fame and influence, at the most fundamental level, Stern and Handler are ultimately no different than you and me. After all, I think most of us long for someone to know who we are, someone to affirm our God-given uniqueness, dignity and worth as individuals. That’s a gift neither of them seemed to receive.

In both Chelsea Handler and Howard Stern’s cases, then, their families seemed to drop the ball when it came to this important task. As a result, two talented-but-wounded children craving attention channeled heart-scarring hurts into careers that now act as a megaphone for their brokenness, multiplying it manyfold among their fans.

So even as we continue to think critically about the influence that entertainers like Stern and Handler wield, we’d do well to remember that they’re still human beings, too—deeply hurt people who, as clichéd as it may seem, deserve our compassion and even our prayers that they might finally experience some healing and release from wounds that have defined the people they are today.