Jeff Jarvis hits the nail on the head re: Howard Stern:

- Don't like Stern? Fine. I understand. Don't want to defend Stern? Ok, but what happens when they come after somebody you do like. What happens when Bill O'Reilly slips one day and says something that offends someone in a gotcha way and that's just the excuse somebody needed to demand that he go off the air. Or Andy Rooney. Or Dan Rather. Or Al Franken, once he's on radio. Doesn't matter what your political stripe is; it's all speech and once it can be shut off for one guy it can be shut off for the next. Defending free speech almost always starts with defending those whose speech you don't like -- but if you don't defend that speech, then you defend no one's speech. When I grew up, the ACLU defended the noxious speech of the KKK to march in the heavily Jewish Chicago suburb of Skokie. It was necessary to defend the principle even with them so as to defend the rights of antiwar protesters or civil rights protesters or, in latter days, abortion protestors to protest. If you don't defend Stern agains the government chill, then you open the door for someone you like to be taken off the air.

- Yes, they are public airwaves. That means they belong to me, too. I want to listen to Stern. You don't. Fine. Change the channel. We have lots of them.

- I abhor this culture of offense. We are becoming ruled by what offends a few of us. If it's offends somebody, then it must be wrong and it must be shut up.
Well, I don't need anyone -- government or corporate nanny -- to protect me from that which might offend me. I can take care of myself and respond myself.

- I have been far, far more offended by things I have heard Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson say on our public airwaves but I have not called for them to be banned, even though they are more disgusting and hateful than Stern has ever been.

Go read the entire post. It's worth it. (via dong, by the way.)