Howard Stern said he’s “no longer friends” with Bill Maher after the “Real Time” host said that Stern’s “gushing” about second wife Beth is a bit much as it must make his first wife, Alison Berns, feel bad.
Maher made the remarks on his Sunday episode of Club Random, in which he said “How does this gushing about the second wife — how does that make the first wife feel? Could we just not gush about the person while the other person can still hear it?”
“What a sexist thing to say!” Stern responded on Tuesday’s episode of his radio show. “Like, what a convoluted, nutty thing to say.”
Stern continued, “He ought to shut his mouth! I mean, I don’t think I come on the air every day and say, ‘I love my wife.’ But I thought it was a pretty positive message, to — especially with my audience — to say to guys: ‘Instead of like ragging on our wives, how about talking about that we appreciate them and love them?’”
He said that Maher’s apparent assumption that Berns is “sitting around pining away for her famous man,” is all wrong.
The shock jock said he emailed Maher and dared him to call him and tell him directly that he’s too effusive about Beth on the air. “Why don’t you tell me what you think about my life and my marriage since you’re, you know.’ But of course, he never wrote me back,” Stern said.
“I just wanted to see how brave he was,” he said of Maher. “If he was brave enough to call me and actually get on the phone with me and zero response. I don’t care, though. He can think what he wants.”
He added, “I think I’m no longer friends with him.”
On Monday, Maher reversed his earlier decision to bring back his HBO talk show before the WGA strike is resolved. He did not cite the significant backlash he got from fellow writers’ guild members, but said that he was encouraged ahead of Wednesday’s new round of negotiations between the WGA and AMPTP.
