For those who aren't watching any news, and it would take watching none to not know what's been happening, the issue involves Don Imus on his radio/television program discussing a female college basketball team. Using street terms, he said they were tough looking women based on their hair and tattoos. He and his producer used the word hos.
What interests me is not Imus but rather racism (of the subtle type where you demean people through little jokes and comments) as well as when is it okay to openly speak your mind? What are appropriate punishments for people who use phrases that are derogatory to others? When is censorship okay and when is it destructive to higher values? Why do black rap artists speak this way about their own women? Why has that been accepted?
I don't have an opinion on whether the girls on the team should forgive Imus, when he meets with them. That's up to them. I also think if someone says they won't ever watch his show again for what he said, that's valid. I also don't have an opinion on whether a corporation might decide not to advertise there or the company who owns the cable station might decide his remarks were such that they didn't want to be associated with him. My interest in this is was it racist or against all women (who aren't Barbie dolls) and was it damaging to the country to the level it is being implied by black leaders such as Al Sharpton?
There are a lot of movies out there that young people flock to that are derogatory to women and races, that use the kind of language that Imus used. There is likewise music that not only uses that kind of language but that even suggests violence against women is justified.
What I knew about Imus before this is that he struck me as presenting himself (multimillionaire that he is) as a good old boy, cracking jokes with his buds, talking about sports, with no deep plans for his shows other than shooting the breeze, and going for the laugh. I know he's a philanthropist and has done a lot of work with children. Whether he actually is a racist, the comments he made were nasty and not funny.
Having now seen and heard from the Rutgers girls' basketball team, they didn't look tough to me. They talked and looked like lovely young ladies in college, who are athletes. Was it fair to put them down for a tattoo-- which a lot of women have-- or for how they might have worn their hair? For that matter, the girls on that stage for the program Tuesday had nice hair, and what the heck was his whole spiel even about? Was there even a tattoo???
It's not hard to understand why the girls were upset. He rained on their moment in the sun and for no reason at all. They had done nothing to deserve his nastiness. Add to it that the media has been milking this for all it's worth, and Al Sharpton quickly jumped on the bandwagon. At first I thought Sharpton was doing it for his usual-- 15 minutes of attention shtick-- but in reality it doesn't appear to be that simple. It sounds like Sharpton has been going after the rap talk for some time. Giving him the benefit of the doubt, perhaps he sees this as his chance to get that kind of hurtful talk a lot of publicity and maybe make some inroads toward eliminating it. It is the kind of talk that demeans people who use it as well as those who are the victim of it.
In Imus's case was it racial or was it more ridiculing the type of woman who is a jock? Maybe someone who has watched or heard more of his show can tell me. Are there two types of women in Imus' mind-- babes and the rest? Was it about that as much or more than ethnicity?
Where do we draw the line on inappropriate talk and fire someone over it? Now if they lose their audience, that's the market speaking; but when they say something the rest of us find abhorrent like when Michael Savage, a few years back, on his own television program wished AIDS onto one of his callers, who he also called a Sodomite. He was quickly fired for it. Radio is obviously less picky.
Yet when Ann Coulter satirically wrote the genocide in Darfur wasn't progressing fast enough, when she called John Edwards a f-----, she continues to have her columns in those right wing papers. Most probably her next poorly researched and written book will again become a bestseller. A lot of this nastiness is purely about color all right-- as the team said today in those interviews-- the color green.
Maybe in Imus's heart, he's a racist. Or the other possibility is he calls out people for what he thinks they are-- regardless of race. He evidently called Powell a weasel, which some are saying was also racist. I'd say that was more like character analysis after Powell let himself be used by the Bush administration to continue it in power for a second 4-year term.
There are consequences to actions, and words are actions. The question is what does freedom of speech, where it comes to the media, really mean?
(Coming next is one last blog on the desert, but this was on my mind to bring up and see if others have been thinking about it.)
6 comments:
The whole question is, was it racist against those women and women in general AND what happened to the line that was invisibly drawn?? He did cross that line, he knows he is garnering SO much publicity over it, so what are the consequences?? None that I can see so far. As for Anne Coulter, her next book will most likely be a best seller because of all the hooplah
As I reflect on this it occurs to me that the larger issue is one of which Don Imus is only one example... people who see demeaning and often hateful speech as comedy, the people who laugh at their "comedy," and the media which eagerly provide a venue.
His humor is of the sort that thought posing prisoners at Abu Graib might be funny, and cruelty isn't supposed to be funny, is it?
Comments were blocked here for awhile which since it's the second time it has happened seems like a blogger glitch. Anyway I have heard Imus was fired from MSNBC. The whole situation was sad but perhaps it can be used for good for the country and Imus himself. He could learn from it and become a better person. We could become a better country if this goes beyond the one incident to a real dialogue about language. Time will tell.
Your comments in your own blog were good on the subject, Alwaysquestion.
I learned from the endless news cycle on this story that Don Imus has a history of making racist comments. I don't know what is the best way to handle this kind of thing because I don't believe in censorship. But I guess that advertisers vote with their dollars. They withdraw support, and Don Imus is silenced in one arena. Does that solve the problem of racism? I don't know. I'd rather see someone like Imus do community service. Philanthropy is good, but getting your hands dirty is a much better lesson sometimes.
I think it was a rude and disgusting thing to say, but Imus has said many terrible things during his career. I have always thought he was a jerk and I am glad to see him get fired, but apparently a lot of people liked him because he had a large audience.
These are division I college athletes, they are elite players in the country. To refer to them as Ho's is just wrong. A couple of them do look pretty tough, I mean they are in New Jersey, but most of the team looks like your typical girl next door.
I read a long article on Time.com about this issue and it points out something that I have seen among my son and his friends, that race is not that important anymore, but since they are more comfortable with each other they say things that would make most of us old geezers cringe. They often call each other by racial terms, but the intent is what is important. If the N word was used in a derogatory manner by a non-friend the user would get his ass kicked and appropriately so, but to call a friend a Jew or a chink is ok. It is a strange world we live in.
What got me about the Imus situation is that it's like so many recently and one that pops into my mind was Trent Lott when he made a casual comment at an event that ended his political effectivness-- at least for awhile. Whether these things lurk in people's heads because of deeper prejudices or simply are what anybody can do-- shoot off their mouth inappropriately-- the end result is one, meaningless comment can be all it takes to end a career (Kerry did the same thing not long ago).
Who this will hurt the most will be democrats as Imus was the he-man who took their side on issues and politicians. He got people to watch him who won't be seeing Bill Press in a million years. And maybe he got them to think and then again maybe not.
From what I have read, Imus had two parts to his show. There was the forum for politicians and thinkers, writers of books, good causes, but then also the shock jock part where he was what he started out to be. Keeping both killed him off in the end as the power he had became the reason some had for eliminating him.
He was a hands on type for his charitable work-- taking children who were autistic or had had cancer to his ranch in New Mexico. A ranch they had gotten for that exact work. So for 8 weeks every summer, he would take these kids and let them have a week to experience the ranch life on which he grew up.
What bothers me about it all is how the media creates these gladiator moments and whether Americans know it or not, they were milked on this one. I watched the press conference of the girls and the reporters kept asking what do you want to see happen to him? Has a two week suspension been enough? They wouldn't fall into the trap but the rest of us do. We let the Al Sharptons use us and maybe he is even used by someone else. Certainly a man who did a lot of good work for others (veterans, autism, cancer patients, etc.) has been taken out of the loop. Whether he can ever do anything like it again, it's hard to say but equally hard to say is whether his one stupid minute of conversation defined who he was as the media convinced everyone.
The only question left is-- who will be the next victim of the one word defining a person?-- because there will be one.
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