Despite claims that they suspended shock jock Howard Stern’s syndicated morning show for vulgarity, and not for his recent anti-Bush statements, radio behemoth Clear Channel Communications replaced the controversial on-air personality this week with Ramblin’ Dick Walker, a pro-Bush shock jock popular among the wealthy and humorless.

Walker, known nationwide for his offensively conservative views and on-air skits that include humorous vocal impressions of the poor, calls the allegations against Clear Channel “abnanmious.”

“Look, if Clear Channel wanted to get some sycophantic Bush-booster in here, I’m the last person they would have called,” claimed Walker. “Check the record, I’ve called Bush to task on everything from his over-generosity to his weak game of horseshoes. I take Georgie to the mat at horseshoes. To the mat!”

Others disagree, calling Walker “a soulless shill for big business” and “human dogshit.” Walker is no stranger to controversy, coming under fire from the FCC in 1998 for his on-air campaign to bait listeners into bombing welfare offices, and again in 2000 when the United Nations heard a complaint from the island of Cuba that they considered being within radio range of Walker’s show to be an act of war.

“Hey man, free speech,” Walker explained, when asked to defend his record of FCC fines and history of inspiring Amnesty International protests. “If Howard Stern can talk about masturbation on-air, it’s hypocrisy that I catch so much flack for talking about sterilizing the indigent.”

Though Clear Channel’s official reasoning behind dropping Stern’s show has been that the program was “vulgar, offensive and insulting,” the company was using those exact same terms to promote the show only weeks ago. And many find the timing to be curious, as Stern had begun criticizing the president only days before the announcement, while the rest of his show’s content remained unchanged. Some point to the “Janet Jackson Superbowl Half-Tit Show” debacle as either the justifiable impetus or lame-assed excuse for Clear Channel’s house cleaning, which also included canceling several other programs that had criticized Bush and America’s war on Iraq.

Meanwhile, in the last week Stern has embarked on his own campaign to raise public awareness of his masturbation habits and the close ties between the Bush Administration and Clear Channel’s CEO Lowry Mays and vice chairman Tom Hicks, not to mention FCC chairman Michael Powell. Political pundits fear that if Stern’s crusade should ever evolve beyond the “What a bunch of assholes!” phase, with popular Republican ballast Rush Limbaugh working at only half-power while learning to propagandize sober, it could tip the upcoming election in favor of Kerry in November.

Ramblin’ Dick Walker, however, finds this scenario unlikely. “No way the poor people vote in this election. You ever try to take a bus somewhere? Forget about it. You might as well stay home and smoke crack. Bush in a landslide.”