Howard Stern is a jerk.

He objectifies women: He coerces them to get naked and perpetuates stereotypes with a game called "Stripper Jeopardy," which makes Saturday Night Live's "Celebrity Jeopardy" look like a MENSA meeting.

He's racist: His controversial statements (and his callers' occasional use of the n-word) have drawn fire from African Americans, Hispanics, Native Americans and almost any other minority group you can think of.

He's homophobic: The only time the word "gay" is not an insult on his radio show is when he is marginalizing the lesbian community by telling "lesbian stories" to titillate his male listeners.

But, I love him.

I think he and his egotistical comments are hysterically funny. I love his Private Parts (that's his autobiography, you sicko -- get your mind out of the gutter). I listen to him whenever I can when I'm at home because no radio station around here airs his program.

Thankfully, my Howard Stern-friendly radio station back home is not one of the 1,250-some radio stations owned nationwide by Clear Channel Communications. Clear Channel yanked Stern from six stations under its control, all of which broadcast his program, saying one of his shows last month "was vulgar, offensive and insulting, not just to women and African Americans but to anyone with a sense of common decency."

In the post-Nipplegate era, in which the tape delay reigns supreme and almost every politician is posturing to appear tough on "filth," it is significant that the first major moves toward censorship have come not from the government, but from the media giants. Instead of standing by the artistic (if you can call it that) integrity of their entertainers, companies like Clear Channel are raising the white flag before the new war against indecency has even begun in earnest.

It is an interesting turn of events in the ever-present struggle between the free press and the government. Previously, the media industry stood by its writers, television reporters and personalities, and defended the First Amendment at all costs. The Washington Post published Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's investigation of the Watergate/Nixon scandal despite intense pressure from the White House to back off. Pacifica Broadcasting defended George Carlin's infamous "Filthy Words" monologue in court.

Those two events happened more than 20 years ago. Now companies are pulling controversial programming off the air before you can say the words "FCC investigation."

This new tendency toward self-policing and hyper vigilance closely follows the recent second coming of the media giant. Clear Channel, Viacom, AOL Time Warner and a handful of other mega corporations are like a group of kids playing Monopoly on a rainy day: The game takes forever, and probably no one will ever win, but it's cutthroat and competitive.

The companies are gobbling up small radio stations, television stations and newspapers across the country. The more stations and papers they own, the more advertising money they get and the cheaper they can make content -- instead of making a television show that is shown on one station, they can broadcast it across the country.

However, this leads to a problem. What makes viewers laugh in New York City might offend them in a small Alabama town. Values are different throughout our nation, and there is no standard definition of "entertainment." Therefore, companies like Clear Channel are attempting to normalize the content: They want to appeal to the largest possible audience by getting rid of anything offensive.

Clear Channel's censorship of Howard Stern is not a stab at protecting the morals and sense of decency of everyday Americans. It is a marketing ploy, a way to make its radio stations palatable to potential listeners. By removing Stern and other controversial radio personalities, Clear Channel is sanitizing its product so that it can be shipped across the nation.

When radio stations are under local control, the station managers understand their audience and can determine if the content is appropriate. Interestingly enough, though, The Fox 100.5 (WTFX-FM), the Louisville, Kentucky, station that used to broadcast Stern, has an "adults only" section to its Web site that contains the "Thong of the Day" and the "Stripper of the Day," each with accompanying pictures. Yes, these galleries are milder than a lot of Stern's content, but they still objectify and are controversial -- and the local listeners seem to love it.

Stern may be a jerk, but I want to make the decision to listen to him or not.

Many people say that they want big government to stay out of their lives. Well, I want big media to stay out of mine. I want to choose, along with my listening audience, whether to listen to Stern.

I want my programming to be appropriate for my fellow listeners and me in Philadelphia (because I admit the market for Stern probably doesn't exist here in Centre County), not for some small town in Alabama.

Because personally, I find "Stripper Jeopardy" hilarious.