Overlooked during the coverage of shock jock Howard Stern’s surprise confrontation of Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Michael Powell on a San Francisco talk show Tuesday, were statements made by Powell regarding Oprah Winfrey – she isn’t off the hook yet for a discussion of sex acts on an episode of her show that ran earlier this year.
Powell acknowledged yesterday that Winfrey’s eponymous television show was the subject of numerous complaints received by the FCC in response to a question submitted via email on Ronn Owen’s morning talk show on San Francisco’s KGO Radio, prior to Stern’s phone call.
“This is a complaint that people make. You can always find another example of something and suggest, ‘Well, when are you going to act on that?’” Powel said. “ We do have complaints about Oprah that we haven’t, to my knowledge to date, ruled on.”
Owens dismissed the idea that Winfrey would ever be fined for indecency, noting her popularity. “She’s like the President,” Owens said.
“I wouldn’t say that. I think the duty and obligation of the commission is to enforce fairly without regard to the notoriety of the particular personality,” Powell said.
Comments made by Owen during the show indicate that Powell had appeared on the show with the understanding that he wouldn’t accept any phone calls – a condition Powell, encouraged by Owen, dropped.
Yet before Powell agreed to accept phone calls, Owen had received questions via email, including two from a listener identified as Kyle – the one about Winfrey and another one about nepotism – topics that later became the dominant focus of the Howard Stern’s emotional questioning of Powell on KGO radio.
Kyle asked how Oprah could get away with discussions of “tossed salads and anal sex without fear of fine or censorship,” a reference to an episode of her popular daytime talk show that was about the sexual habits of teenagers and included language similar to that which Stern was fined for broadcasting.
Winfrey and guest Michelle Burford, an editor at O, The Oprah Magazine discussed the sexual behavior of teenagers on the Oprah episode “Is Your Child Living a Double Life?” The episode originally aired on October 2, 2003 and was rerun in March of this year, within in days of Infinity Broadcasting receiving the first in a series of fines levied against radio stations that carried episodes of Stern show’s that the FCC found indecent.
During the Oprah segment in question, Burford, ironically a former journalist for conservative activists Focus on Family, defined a “rainbow party,” as a group oral sex activity where women the girls put lipstick and then, “each one puts her mouth around the penis of the gentleman or gentlemen who are there to receive favors and makes a mark um in a different place on the penis.”
She also defined “tossed salad,” as “oral anal sex.”
Stern was fined by the FCC for broadcasting a radio segment that defined various sexual terms – causing Stern to draw public attention to the Oprah episode in question to highlight what he felt was the inequality of existing indecency regulations.
Kyle also asked Powell if his father, Secretary of State Collin Powell, had anything to do with Powell obtaining his position of the chairman of the FCC.
Powell acknowledged that the questions were both fair when presented by Kyle.
“I like to believe, I do believe, I had a long career before I got this job and I think my credentials led me to this position,” Powell said in response the nepotism charges.
“We were trained as Army children to make your own way, to work hard and develop your own skills and your own interests. He doesn’t know anything about my field and I only know a little bit about his,” Powell said.
Then Howard Stern, claiming to have been tipped off by a friend that Powell was going to appear on Owens’s show, called in and started in on Powell almost immediately.
“The commissioner has fined me millions of dollars for things that I have said, and consistently avoids me and avoids answering my questions and I’m wondering how long he’ll stay on the phone with me,” Stern said.
The back and forth between Powell and Stern lasted over ten minutes, causing Owens to skip three commercial breaks to accommodate their discussion.
“You kind of sit there and you're the judge and the arbiter and you're the one who tells us what we can and can't say on the air and I really don't think you're qualified to be the head of the commission. Do you deny that your father got you this job?" Stern asked, seemingly unaware of Kyle’s questions.
"I deny it exceedingly," responded Powell, who then gave a brief version of his resume that included a stint as the chief of staff for the antitrust division of the Department of Labor prior to being appointed to the FCC by Bill Clinton.
George W. Bush selected Powell to take over the top position at the FCC upon his election to the presidency.
Stern continued to harp on the alleged nepotism, but also asked about the fairness of the Oprah Winfrey show not being fined for broadcasting material that Stern considered comparable to the language that resulted in his fines.
“That case is still at the commission. I mean, if we don’t then you can ask that question, but until we resolve it I don’t think that’s fair to ask that question,” Powell said.
