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EMIL
FRANZI |
Reactions to
Imus' demise raise bigger issuesApril 18, 2007 |
Unlike the over-exposed
demise of Anna Nicole Smith, the heavily discussed
firing of radio host Don Imus is a culturally relevant
occurrence. Imus himself was never particularly
significant, but the multiple reactions to his demise
probes numerous other issues.
Imus was never part of any particular political faction. His egocentricity and epistemological paucity inhibited that option, but it was a useful posture. He got away with it for so long because, like a third-world country in the Cold War, he was non-aligned. That’s why so many writers and pols from various perspectives saw fit to overlook his prior transgressions. He gave them exposure and book sales. They gave him sufferance until he finally went too far. A cogent discussion on the Imus question was held on KVOI between talk hosts Hugh Hewitt, Dennis Prager and Michael Medved. It outlined divergent views present far more often on the center right than the left wants to concede. Hewitt wanted Imus fired, Medved didn’t, and Prager was ambivalent. That matrix carried over to many liberals with the posers yelling for his head while many genuine liberals like Allan Colmes, Ellen Goodman and our own Ernesto Portillo were actually concerned about that free speech slippery slope many of their lefty colleagues selectively invoke. Hewitt broke the tie for me. The issue went beyond what Imus said to whom he said it about. It’s one thing to trash pols and entertainers, they’re fair game. Imus belched racist and sexist comments before. But it’s something else to bad mouth the Rutgers female basketball team in any format. They are cultural non-combatants. I laid that argument on Tom Danehy, my radio co-host and girl’s basketball coach, also an honest liberal with mixed emotions, with some effect. Others on the hard left were more inclined to sound as thuggish as Imus had. It never occurred to Imus (telling us much about himself) that the main apologies owed were to those he insulted, the team. Instead he empowered Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton as their agents by apologizing through THEM. At that moment even casual observers knew he was toast. Sharpton got to call for the “regulation” of anybody he defined as “racist” and push for the return of the defunct “fairness doctrine” as a weapon against talk radio. He and others also announced a little list of others they wish to purge from the airwaves. Glad they told us because it exposes their real motivation — silencing opposition. Ironic that the catalyst for it was somebody who was never part of their opposition and was basically hostile toward it. It won’t work. It will be — and has been — a rare talk show type who will venture as far into bad taste and bad judgment as Imus did. But the exercise raises other questions: Will networks — and by extension publishers — panic and prematurely remove “product” based on the THREAT of advertiser boycotts? This, as perceptive liberals have noticed, could easily be a multi-lane highway. Are non-blacks permanently excluded from using the same slang blacks do? How about other minorities or ethnic groups? Can only Italians play on the next version of the Sopranos? Was Jesse Jackson sufficiently discredited by the almost simultaneous pronouncement by North Carolina’s Attorney General that the Duke University LaCrosse players were innocent of all charges? Jackson had already proclaimed their guilt and further told us how much young white men lust over black women, giving us a mirror image of some KKK cracker warning white folks about the same urges from blacks. Also recalled was Sharpton’s open lying in the infamous Tywana Brawley case. These guys gain or lose? Will Imus make a comeback, not through contrition but via a tasteless media more inclined to his characteristics like Satellite radio? Hopefully, the net results of the Imus incident will benefit a culture that needs all the help it can get. |
BUT WATCH WHAT YOU SAY! |
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