I think Don Imus is an asshole. I don't like him, but I don't get to decide how people choose to entertain themselves. Imus was fired for making a racist and sexist comment, but no one has really mentioned all of the other people on the air whose comments have been just as bad or worse. Bill O'Reilly, for example, has referred to Mexicans as wetbacks and has NEVER apologized. Ann Coulter recently called John Edwards a faggot, but apparently that doesn't count because she had to go to rehab. Rosie O'Donnell has used a very offensive "Chinese" accent on The View. I haven't even mentioned all of the rap "artists" who use offensive language on their albums, but no one is stringing them up.
And while America was paying attnetion to Don Imus, few people noticed that Karl Rove and his staff deleted hundreds of emails over the course of several years.
3,302 US soldiers killed in Iraq
24,645 US Soldiers wounded in Iraq
Monday, April 16, 2007
The Imus Double Standard
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15 comments:
Saur♥Kraut said...
Soooooo true. I agree 100%. Incidentally, I find it rather silly that some people are screaming that Imus' firing is a suppression of free speech. No it isn't! He can go somewhere else and exercise his right to it. But, it's certainly the right of his employer to fire him, too... unless we truly no longer live in the USA that was founded in 1776 with a quaint old-fashioned document called The Constitution.
1:12 PM
United We Lay said...
I agree, it's not necessarily a supression of free speech. I think what people are worried about is that if corporate interests can shut up Imus, who will they target next? Bill Maher was targeted a few years ago. How will things fare for people like Jon Stewart?
UWL, True. Sadly much of it is driven by audience and advertisers. In Imus' case, there wasn't much of an audience any more, and the advertisers were boycotting, so they were losing. But... he can always get his message out to the masses by broadcasting for free (or almost free) via the internet, or satellite radio (though many think this is a dying forum).
What's really sad is watching how many people follow Rush. They aren't thinkers, of course - they like to be spoonfed. I find it amazing. Those of us who are thinking conservatives have a hard time fitting in anywhere.
Now, Underground Logician is a thinking conservative too, and a rarity. He also has a lot of backbone to keep arguing with people who don't agree with him. I don't agree with him all the time, but I admire the tenacity.
I agree also. I think for years we've been desensitized to racist and politically incorrect comments until someone says something about the African Americans. Not that there is nothing wrong with what Imus said. Absolutely inappropriate but no more so than the others you mentioned.Al Sharpton himself made anti-semetic comments a few years back but there was barely a blimp in the media yet his voice against Imus is the loudest.
This time around?
The basketball coach says "He stole are dream". If you allow your dream to be stolen by three ugly words then you just aren't going to make it in this world. Sorry.
You're right though.
The ugliest truth is that the email story is shown as so much less sensational.
The war and it's casualities left to the third page!
Perspective, use it or lose it.
So sad.
i agree with you all i think.
I dont know about the instances you site and dont even know all the players but its hard for to imagine that bill O or rosie said wetback. I agree also with the take of it didn't affect his free speech. He was employed and when his employer has no use for him then he has the right to let him go.
great post
js
Last Friday on Real Time with Bill Maher, Bill Bradley said it best: it's not a question of free speech, but one of decency.
Don Imus isnt so much the problem as a symptom. The problem is a lack of old-fashion good manners. This includes Imus, Sharpton, rappers, the Senate, you name it. We seem to have become a nation of children thumbing their nose at each other. Combined with our "love" of extreme culture, we're a lot like emotional junkies looking for our next high (actually, the author David Brin has a theory that it really is an addiction).
At the risk of sounding like an old person, until we start demanding a bit of common decency from not only our public figures, but ourselves, none of this is going to change.
Saur,
Many of the shock jocks engage in 13 year-old humor (fart jokes, etc...), but it is the guys like Imus and Rush that do cause damage. Giving them a forum makes people who aren't necessarily deep thinkers believe that it's socially acceptable to speak that way.
Thinking conservatives are usually Democrats. There is very little difference between the two parties, and to call Democrats "liberal" is a gross misnomer. I think the Republicans have crossed over into the super conservative realm.
It's hard to give UL credit for believing what he does as it is so often based on an absence of facts. It is even harder to commend him for discussing things with people whose ideas are different from his when the motivation seems to be more to stir the pot than to learn something. You (Ed Abby, Bud, Three Score, Exmi) and I often disagree, but I feel the level of discourse in which we engage is drastically different from the tone and perspective of his arguments. He does have some good points, and I do my best to address them, but I am often put off by his tone. I understand that he feels that a fundamental part of him, his religion, is being attacked, and in a way, it is, but I do not attack him personally, and I try not to engage in name-calling and childish accusations.
As a former librarian, I think there should be freedom of speech also and censorship is not a good thing. I watched Imus once and practiced my freedom to not listen to his speech - mostly because he was mean to his employee. I think the true character of anyone can be judged by how they treat people with less status than them.
Rue,
I agree. No one can take tha kind of thing away from you unless you let them. To come out and hold press conferences, rallies, etc... is extremely excessive. Make a statement to the press, then move on. There's no press conference every time a rapper calls black women something even more inappropriate, and that stuff is played on the radio as well, and even more impressionable people listen. There wasn't a rally when Bill O'Reilly called Mexicans "wetbacks". Chinatown did not shut down the day after Rosie O'Donnell did an offensive accent on NATIONAL TV. If you're going to go up in arms about one guy, you need to follow through and discuss the rest of them. These girls had the opportunity to stand up and say, "Imus' comments are just a symptom of a culture in which women and especially african-American women are not respected, and it has to stop." I'm disappointed in them.
Jsull,
It may be hard for you to believe, but it's true. It's very easy to find the information and see it on YouTube. I think part of the problem is the willingness of the American people to dismiss things like this as "it's hard to believe". It's not. Just because you didn't hear it yourself doesn't mean it didn't happen, and certainly doesn't mean that the people who are telling you that it happened are any less credible than if you heard it yourself.
Dave,
I agree with all you said and I will probably write a post on that article. It's very interesting.
Flimsy, I too am against censorship. But freesom of speech does not guarantee access to a privileged podium. If it did, you'd be seeing me on MSNBC. Firing Imus was not censorship, because MSNBC and CBS radio are not being honest about why they fired him. He cost them $$$ through loss of advertising.
Alright...since people are talking about me, I might as well jump in.
Saur, thanks for the kind words. UWL, I often think that the tone you dislike is my confident disagreement with you. I don't mince words, but neither does Cranky Yankee. Too often, and it's not just with you, when I disagree with a statement, whether I'm blogging or speaking with people whom I rub elbows, some interpret my disagreements as an attack on them personally. My first instinct is to shrug this off as a manipulative ploy to get me to back down. However, I think I may be wrong (I have no way of knowing for sure, unless people letting me know why they react). Perhaps I can learn here.
In a pluralistic society where relativism is engrained in us, the discussion of Truth is automatically upsetting. We are conditioned by our relativistic masters in public "dojos" to be "open" and consider all viewpoints and resist declaring what is true. To be otherwise is to to be proud, arrogant, know-it-all...even fundamentalist and Christian wingnut! (Yeah, Cranky, I'm watchin' you!) The problem is people miss the absolutes they hold to when excoriating the very "intolerance" they decry. To call someone proud, arrogant fundamentalist or wingnutty requires beliefs that are absolutely "true" as well. When I expose these self-refutations, people get irritated. Their game is exposed and they don't like it. All I can say is: stop trying to have it both ways!
My approach is a form of an elenchus. An elenchus is a Socratic method where Socrates will analyze a declarative statement through questioning and find whether or not is has the substance to withstand a dialectical challenge. Sometimes I dispense with the questioning and launch into open disagreement or peck away at a fallacy. But, it is with the thought or notion; it is never an attack people's intellegence or with their person. I may become irritated, which I'm sure UWL picks up on. But it is because I see how bad ideas cause people to make bad decisions, and I don't want to see any of you hurt. There are times when I may even question your motives for holding to such fallacies, but it is not because I doubt your intellegence. I fear that you have been horn-schwaggled.
As it stands, Socrates was not well liked for doing this and thus, was condemned to death for misleading youths and teaching atheism (he did not believe in the pantheon of gods, but One Transcendent God). Enough of this.
As to your post, UWL, I pretty much agree. I never could get into shock jocks, whoever they be. Our world is cruel enough; I don't need to tune into it on my radio or computer. I think Daveaway is spot on by calling it a matter of decency. Imus' work is often cruel and vicious. Paying someone to do this violates the idea of true work. Work is to accomplish a good, make the world a better place; serve those around us; meet the needs and legitimate wants of humanity.
Cutting, denegrating, insulting words and actions can be found for free at any bar or family reunion. No one should get paid for doing it.
well i hope you didnt think i was accusing you of not telling the truth
I was not
its just hard for me to imagine those 2 (the only 2 i have seen/heard of, as aware as they are of their image that they slammed someone so blatantly. thats all i was saying. I have never and will never accuse you or anyone else of telling a lie, I'm above that.
good post either way
js
Jsull,
That was a response to you, but I was referring to the ease with which people in general often dismiss things they haven't heard themselves.
As an English teacher, I feel any limiting of free speech is dangerous, even when that speech is hurtful or offensive. No one has the right to censor anyone in this country. That is not to say that we should not be censoring oursleves. There is such a thing as common decency. Don’t swear in front of the baby, but don’t tell me not to swear in front of the baby - that sort of thing. I also agree that Imus shouldn’t have lost his job, nor should he have been made to apologize. He is a racist. He has the right to be one, and publically if he chooses. We don’t have to like him for it, but we do have to allow it to be so in order for this to be a democracy for us all.
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