But because this was the Howard Stern show. I immediately said no; I would not come. Maybe I wouldn't even win in this category; even if I did, someone else could accept in my stead.

When the woman I was speaking to, and whose job it was to book the guests, heard my refusal, she said, "Hold on." So for a while I was left waiting on the line. When she came back, she said: "No, you must be there. Everyone who's nominated has to attend."

I was outraged at hearing this. What could they be up to? The installment, like the others, was to be taped in just a couple of days. Soon after, one of the male staff told me the same thing about mandatory attendance.

THOUGH I SAID NO, THEY DIDN'T TAKE IT FOR AN ANSWER AND FORCED ME TO COME UNWILLINGLY.

When I arrived at the studio, it would be a while before the taping started. I was put into a private room, where there was a TV set, and was left to busy myself. I decided to keep practicing my speech should I win.

Quite some time passed until the hour came for a TV show I wanted to watch. I turned on the set, but at the commercial break, a promo was inserted for the episode I was about to make.

The announcer's voice said it was an award series; then a superimposed image of an award figurine was inserted. When I saw how the figurine looked, I shot up out of my seat. The award figurines were pornographic naked women, bent forward at the waist, with a paper-money bill wedged between the buttocks!!

Now I knew I had been taken, again. I wasn't going to accept an award like that! I ran out of the room and screamed for the male staff member I had been made to seek counsel with. But he could not be located; instead, two girls came. I wanted to leave at once; I would not go on tonight. But these staff girls made me go with them to another part of the premises. They would not let me leave. They insisted that the promo I saw was only a test pilot; the figurines actually looked different.

I TRIED TO LEAVE, BUT WAS OVERTAKEN AND FORCED TO RETURN.

Finally I was hustled into the banquet room and made to sit at a table peopled by immodestly dressed girls. My category was to be next. I did win Best Choreography, but the statue was, indeed, the pornographic figurine I had seen on the promo.

Greatly angered, I spoke in graphic detail about Howard's atrocities and the indignities I had suffered, and that I was refusing the award. I actually banged my fists on the table in saying to him, "Clean up your act!" Later, people said that others at their tables, and Howard, either pulled their ties or shuddered in fear.

SOCIETY ALWAYS FRETS ABOUT VIOLENCE ON TV SETTING BAD REAL- LIFE EXAMPLES. HOWARD STERN'S R-AND X-RATED COMEDY BROUGHT A REAL TRAGEDY IN LIFE TO ME.

Shortly after the award episode aired, I received an indignant letter from a group headquartered apparently in southern New Jersey. They had organized themselves into an Underdog Fan Club, but were now dissolving it! "We have been absolutely besieged with complaints from our friends and neighbors... How could you possibly have accepted? ... you are too unhealthy an example for us and our children..."

I cried my eyes out at this. Howard Stern, not I, was the bad example; he and his stooges had forced me to make that episode. Now I was being punished because of him.

However, this unfaithful group never contacted me until after my first Stern appearance. Their original letter was also a questionnaire which, when I filled it out, revealed that I did more than just portray Underdog. I had had to send the entire original letter back to them via a printed post-office box address, so that I could not write to them on my own. Now, in receiving their farewell note, I found no return address on the envelope, and only a "South Jersey" postmark, so that I could not trace these people to their hometowns. I had never dreamed there would ever be an Underdog Fan Club, let alone one dedicated to me; now one started in the wake of Howard Stern was also ending because of him.

But didn't the Nickelodeon revival of the Underdog cartoon series make children see the truth about you?

No. By the time Nickelodeon started the reruns, the children had already been brainwashed by Stern & Company. Even afterward, children treated me no better.

I WAS ON HOWARD STERN 3 TIMES FROM FEBRUARY TO MAY OF 1992. THE NICKELODEON REVIVAL DID NOT START UNTIL JUNE 15, 1992.

To quote my awards speech:
"The Underdog cartoon series hasn't been shown in about nine years. Thus millions of unsuspecting children [who had somehow tuned in to Howard Stern] were hearing of him for the first time. But because of Howard, his assistants, the other guests, and their assorted antics constituting what Howard himself termed `a sea of debauchery,' these impressionable youngsters were also hearing terms like `orgasm,' `Ku Klux Klan,' `homosexuality,' `lesbianism,' and so forth, for the first time. Now they think Underdog is Howard's invention, and that the character and I are lustful cads."

Because Howard Stern "got there first," children took him at his word. Then, when Nickelodeon began re-running Underdog's cartoons, neither adults nor children who were viewers of Underdog via Nickelodeon -- let's call them VUNs -- ever told me that they were aware of the revival. When they did speak to me, they harped only on Howard Stern. If these people were VUNs, they never admitted so to me; they certainly never put two and two together in terms of the differences or connections between animated and live impersonation.

 

Ever since that fateful invitation to be on this dissolute program, I have had to set people straight every minute re these aforementioned matters. But those same people only teased me spitefully; while others promptly forgot my words or were deliberately obnoxious.

Since the program aired nationwide, its nature, contents, and especially my consequent indignities were inexcusable. How, especially, could children have tuned in to it? How could their adultfolk have allowed it? If the adults watched it at all, they set up a bad example for the children.

Because the Underdog character was patterned almost entirely after Superman, Howard Stern chose also to profane the latter.

HOWARD STERN SAID THE ONLY LINK BETWEEN SUPERMAN AND UNDERDOG WAS GIRLFRIEND-CHASING!

Howard Stern also emphasized that Underdog was "just a silly show." To this I had replied: "True, but there was a lot of negative feedback on that, just like with the Batman series with Adam West. The public demanded either improvement or cancellation. With Underdog, I've always done him more sensibly and realistically."

HOWARD STERN WENT FURTHER BY DECIDING THAT TO BE MORE REALISTIC, OR MATURE, UNDERDOG HAD TO BE INCLINED TOWARD "ADULTIFICATION" -- ADULT VICES SUCH AS GREED, PRIDE, OR LUST!

 

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