...and, may I add, his show has finally become regularly *listenable* for the first time since, say, about a dozen years ago. I cranked on Howard when I was the Chicago and Milwaukee columnist for RadioDigest.com (in 2000) for a very good and simple reason -- even he has admitted he was too angry and frustrated to actually put on a good show at that time, worried that the Federal Communications Corruption would send yet another lightning bolt to CBS' pocketbook for something he'd say into a microphone that didn't really deserve a fine. (His attack on WLUP Chicago chief Larry Wert when he was cancelled there in '93 -- Howard claimed he hoped Wert would acquire AIDS and pass the disease along to his children -- still sticks in my craw, but I'm finally getting past that.) He's now breathing a helluva lot easier, and the nature of the whole show is now tolerable as a result. Now the biggest point of negative concern is whether or not Artie Lange can keep from killing himself from one of his excesses as an oral consumer of whatever he's been partaking for the last few years (it's telling that Artie's name is one that popped up in Tom Leykis' 2007 Deadpool broadcast)...
