Howard Stern Among Media's Worst In 2022
OutKick is reviewing the worst of the media in 2022 during the holiday season. Naturally, that includes Howard Stern.
But before we dive into Howard and friends, here's a quick reminder that you can read OutKick's other year-end lists on the site, including: top television shows, golf stories, and SEC moments of the year.
Now, let us review.
Perhaps there have been worse years for the press than this past. Still, it's hard to pinpoint one as atrocious, reckless, and humiliating as the one in 2022. And that leads us to the top of the list...
Howard Stern
The once-great radio host has evolved into the precise establishment shill he made a career of mocking.
68-year-old Stern spent much of 2022 hunkered down in his basement, quivering at the thought that Covid-19 might just kill him.
Nearly three years later, Howard Stern's SiriusXM program remains a cesspool of Covid hysteria. Recently, he speculated that "Cheers" star Kirstie Alley's opposition to vaccine mandates caused her death from colon cancer.
"I know she was an anti — she was not anti-vaccine, but she was anti-mandate. Maybe — this was a theory this morning cause we were all discussing it. Maybe she didn't go to the doctor soon enough when she wasn't feeling well," said Stern.
Howard Stern was insufferable in 2022. (Photo by RB/Bauer-Griffin/GC Images).
Consider that Stern produced such baseless gibberish before Alley's family could even bury her.
Elsewhere, Howard took aim at Oprah Winfrey. Oprah hosted a holiday party, which Stern deemed unacceptable behavior with the lab-made virus still afoot.
While Stern is not a sports fan, he has taken particular interest in Aaron Rodgers. In fact, he demanded the NFL ban Rodgers permanently for remaining unvaccinated.
On a brighter note, at least Howard was able to eat dinner in a public setting this year. In October, he left his bunker for the first time since 2020 to dine with some pals.
"Howard Stern has become a cantankerous, far left-wing, woke loser," Clay Travis concluded of Stern's fall from prominence.
I discussed on Fox News with Brian Kilmeade how Covid hysteria -- not Covid; Covid hysteria -- turned Howard Stern into a coward, a man broken, a fragile shell of his former self.
Taylor Lorenz
Taylor Lorenz entered 2022 as a relatively unknown figure. Yet she finished the year as the poster child for the fall of the corporate press.
Billed as The Washington Post tech reporter, Lorenz's job is to write factually-dubious hit pieces on those who challenge the preferred left-wing narrative: like the Libs of TikTok Twitter account.
Lorenz is a smear merchant by day and a victim by night. She stalks (literally), harasses, and lies about her story subjects. Then, she accuses her critics of bullying and causing her "severe PTSD" when they don't respond accordingly.
In April, Taylor cried on MSNBC about meanies harassing and doxxing after she finished harassing and doxxing a conservative media influencer.
Lorenz holds herself up as a hero. She acts as if some greater power put her on Earth to guide society through the words she pens.
It's up to Taylor to forewarn Americans that Elon Musk's new Twitter policy is about to increase death totals:
But one shall not blame Lorenz for her dramatics. It's not her fault. She's the victim, remember?
Taylor is medically vulnerable, and Covid has her thinking sideways. And still, her inconsiderate employer forced her to fly on an airplane in June, despite her distress.
"I have to fly soon for work & as someone who is medically vulnerable I'm so scared. All COVID precautions that keep high risk people safe have been dropped. I plan to keep an N95 on my face for all 7 hours w/ zero water breaks, but I'm scared it may not seal perfectly. Any tips?," Lorenz said in a now-deleted tweet.
Not even a water break.
Not all heroes wear capes. But they do wear masks:
Keith Olbermann
There's an ongoing debate at OutKick about whether we should include Keith Olbermann in the 2023 Woke All-Star Challenge. The argument against his inclusion is he's too dominant.
In 2022, he received a staggering 80% of the vote. Not even crackhead and criminal Rex Chapman could challenge the deranged left-wing lunatic.
Ultimately, voters had no choice but to award Keith for his uncanny behavior.
To begin the year, we learned that Olbermann sent the CEO of NBCUniversal an unsolicited 5,000-word dissertation-style email begging for a job at MSNBC.
NBC said no.
When you are too whacked out for a roster with Joy Reid, it's best to reconsider your trajectory.
But Mr. Olbermann disagreed. Instead, the crazy bastard called for the dissolution of the Supreme Court. He resorted to tweeting from his dog's account. And uploaded a video yelling into the sky at the unvaccinated with a venom-like substance dripping from his face:
Did you know Keith once had a girlfriend? He made it a year-long resolution to remind the public he was not always lonely and unstable.
Roughly once a month, Olbermann recalls the days he dated Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ):
Did you hear Keith once dated Sinema?
The humiliating state of Keith Olbermann is a warning to the woke. He's living proof of what years of lies, misery, hypocrisy, and baseless indignation do to a human.
We often picture him screaming aloud in his apartment full of adopted pets, not dissimilar to the classic shot of Al Pacino in the third installment of "The Godfather."
CNN+
2022 was supposed to be the year CNN+ turned the page in the history book of cable news.
The company had spent around $300 million on the project at the time of its March launch. CNN planned to invest a total of $1 billion into the streaming service, with the goal of profitability in year four.
CNN hired Chris Wallace as the face of the service. It created exclusive programming around linear hosts Jake Tapper, Anderson Cooper, Don Lemon, and Brian Stelter.
Ultimately, CNN hoped to gain an advantage over rivals MSNBC and Fox News with the news industry's most ambitious investment into streaming yet.
Even Dr. Fauci contributed to the launch:
Chris Wallace on CNN+.
But before the rollout, CNN's parent company AT&T spun off WarnerMedia assets (CNN, HBO, TNT, TBS, etc.), thus forming Warner Bros' Discovery.
The change in management created two problems for the service:
Problem 1: Discovery was not convinced there was an appetite for the Netflix-ization of CNN.
Problem 2: Discovery was right.
Viewers do not watch CNN for free as part of their cable package. And it turned out viewers don't pay extra for offshoot CNN content.
Who could have imagined?
Fewer than 10,000 people used CNN+ on a daily basis. Its content was neither interesting nor informative.
A group of pampered elites warning of white supremacy and climate change proved unworthy of $5.99 a month.
(Again, who could have imagined?)
CNN+ launched on March 29 and ceased operations on April 28.
That's 32 days for a planned billion-dollar project. New Coke, Jeffrey Epstein's time in jail, and Kamala Harris' presidential campaign lasted longer than CNN+.